An open letter on the Pinnan issue

It has been six years since Taiwanese consortiums Tuntex (東帝士) and Yeh-Loong (燁隆) announced their intention to develop a steel and petrochemical industrial complex in coastal Tainan County (台南縣). The environmental impact assessment (EIA) prepared for the Pinnan Industrial Complex Project (濱南工業區綜合開發案) came under immediate and serious attack upon its release because it was blatantly unscientific and the project's scope highly implausible.

The international scientific community wants to know why and how, after six years of controversy and the release of further evidence that Pinnan would have a catastrophic and irreversible impact, was this project conditionally approved last December? These are valid questions that must be answered.

This week, the committee to review Pinnan's EIA will meet for the last time to discuss the revised report submitted by the developers in response to imposed conditions. One thing is immediately obvious. With the new administration's attitude toward Pinnan uncertain, the project's supporters, including the current administration, would rather act now than later.

The situation is reminiscent of what took place last December. At the end of last year, with the presidential election hanging in balance, when it looked like Pinnan would never pass, the government resorted to secret meetings to push the project through.

To think that credible scientists reviewing the project would willingly participate in such an action is beyond our imagination. Have they been unduly pressured by the government that they have agreed to serve in good faith? Has their research funding been threatened? Or have they been told that they would suffer some other severe consequence if they didn't deliver a "yes" vote on Pinnan?

We of the international scientific community were shocked and outraged at the conditional approval of the Pinnan project. We don't have to remind the review committee that the Tsengwen Estuary (曾文溪三角洲) is one of the most important wetlands in the world. Both the approval and the process cast clouds of suspicion over Taiwan as it recklessly disregards scientific knowledge and the democratic process.

There is strong scientific evidence that the environmental review process has been ignored in approving Pinnan. By discounting the impact of CO2 emissions, of a limited water supply, the impact on wetlands of Ramsar merit, the impact on the rare and endangered black-faced spoonbill (黑面琵鷺), the impact on the existing economy and quality of life, and in failing to consider viable alternatives, the EIA review committee has taken an action that is irresponsible by the scientific standards accepted by leading nations.

By choosing to ignore the best scientific advice of top Taiwanese scholars and international researchers, the conclusions of this EIA process will always be seriously flawed from a scientific perspective. No one can be proud to have been part of such a decision. The disregard of the democratic process likewise makes Taiwan appear more like a nation under martial law than an international democratic leader.

Any democratic review process requires three things: one, the process must follow the stated rules; two, it must be open to the public; and three, serious study must be given to viable alternatives.

Last December's review process on the Pinnan complex review process violated all three.