The Executive Yuan's National Council for Sustainable Development has designated 2003 as the first year of Taiwan's national sustainable development.
The organization worked out a Taiwan Sustainable Development Action Plan last year, listing more than 100 policies and measures that Taiwan must adopt in order to achieve sustainable development. It stipulates that the government needs to revise Agenda 21, which was drafted in the spring of 1999, and reformulate an Agenda 21 of Taiwan: National Sustainable Development Strategy Guidelines. At the same time, it has to assist local governments to draw up blueprints for local sustainable development.
These tasks are the responsibility of Sustainable Vision Working Group, which I have convened under the Cabinet's Council for Economic Planning and Development. Therefore, I am very concerned with and have supervised the formulation of national policies and local plans for sustainable development.
Early last November, the Council for Economic Planning and Development worked out the national sustainable development strategy guidelines. Since last December, local governments have started to draw up blueprints for local sustainable development. So far, 11 county governments have promised to work out their plans in six months in line with national sustainable development strategies.
The local sustainable development plans should fulfill the following three goals:
First, they should examine whether the local governments' economic development policies over the past 20 years have been compatible or in conflict with sustainable development goals.
Second, they should identify major local problems, including environmental pollution, conservation, incentive measures, transportation construction, population make-up and flows, and space planning.
Third, these plans should be able to employ effective democratic procedures to help academics reach a consensus on the goals of sustainable development so that they can draw up visions, feasible goals and action plans for at least the next 10 years.
The Council for Economic Planning and Development will finance and provide necessary training to the 11 county governments to carry out the sustainable development planning. I agree with the program in the sense that it empowers local governments. I hope that the 11 governments will present desirable and feasible sustainable development visions in six months and become models for the remaining 12 county governments. Most importantly, the 11 regions cover northern, central, southern and eastern Taiwan as well as outlying islands. So their local sustainable development plans make representative paradigms for areas with different sizes, cultures, ecological environments and levels of urban development.
The scope of the 11 blueprints should be smaller than county commissioners' extensive policy platforms and larger than concrete environmental protection projects.
They should plan for at least 10 years at a time, which is longer than commissioners' terms in office. Input to these plans should not be limited to bureaucrats but incorporate that of local enterprises and activists. I think that after six months of collective brainstorming and discussion, heads of local authorities will also be able to grasp more precisely the needs of local development and the best development direction in their own counties and nearby areas.
Therefore, 2004 is very much the first year of local sustainable development.
Michael Hsiao is executive director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies at Academia Sinica.
Translated by Jennie Shih
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