In 1988, the Linyuan incident (
The Ministry of Economic Affairs later silenced the protests by giving each person NT$300,000. Similarly, protests over environmental pollution created by the Sixth Naphtha Cracker (
Protests by people living near incinerators and garbage dump sites are often "satisfactorily" dealt with through agreements on the amount of compensation (
However, what was once wrong becomes right -- once you get used to it. This phenomenon has become manifest in the row over the environmental impact assessment for Microelectronics Corporation (UMC,
In other countries, environmental disputes are often settled through different forms of compensation. For example, Dupont, a US company, voluntarily allots part of its profits to compensate for its environmental pollution. The company was willing to not only compensate the local residents, but also be a "community" with them. The act prevents environment protests. Compensation ought to be a remedy that companies voluntarily provide.
But this is not the way things are in Taiwan. The government allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to its compensation fund before the construction of the Fifth Naphtha Cracker (
In the controversy surrounding the environmental impact assessment for UMC, compensation became the center of arguments. The Hsinchu government was accused of "blackmailing" UMC by demanding compensation.
But environmental impact assessments should not be conducted to facilitate compensation payments. And establishing a feedback fund should be done voluntarily by companies for the communities in which they operate. It is not a type of permission given by the local government. Local governments' excessive demands for a feedback fund are a form of extortion.
To set aside potential opposition to policy implementation, the government uses money to silence people's complaints. It has not only cultivated people's greed and appetite for being compensated, but also prevented implementation of national environmental protection policies.
Government compliance with the law and full execution of its environment protection statues are the ultimate solutions for this tangled problem. Now that the new government has taken over, I hope that we can leave behind our old and erroneous beliefs about recompense in order to jump start a new and brighter future for environmental protection.
Lin Pi-yao is a professor of chemistry at Tunghai University.
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