Recently, the legislature passed the third reading of an amendment to the Water Pollution Control Act (水污染防治法). The proposal greatly reduces the fines for water pollution by industrial animal farming facilities from between NT$60,000 and NT$600,000 to between NT$6,000 and NT$120,000.
Many people were shocked that the amendment was passed, and it made those of us working on the environmental education and research team at National Cheng Kung University's College of Social Sciences very angry. We want to voice our strong objection to the amendment to the legislature.
After the proposal passed, the legislators who had supported it claimed that dealing with water pollution by other industries and by industrial animal farming separately would help the development of animal farming, while remaining in line with principles of justice and fairness. There are a lot of problems with this explanation and it is unacceptable.
The proposed amendment is not in line with principles of justice and fairness. We would rather have no animal farming industry at all than one whose development depended on the possibility of polluting rivers with wastewater and damaging our health.
If a highly polluting animal industry has to be developed, then it is only right that those operating in and profiting from that industry should be made to carry the cost.
Pollution of the environment must be prevented and industry operators must be required to come up with plans to somehow compensate for the pollution or clean it up.
Another option would be to shift the cost of controlling or cleaning up the pollution onto the consumer.
Only under these conditions can highly polluting pig farms be allowed to exist. Passing the proposed amendment without such complementary measures goes completely against the principles of fairness and justice.
The proposal is also not fair for people who live in or near the polluted areas. Rivers polluted by wastewater from animal husbandry destroy the ecology and contaminate the drinking water supply of local residents.
This means that aside from the fact that water pollution is harmful to the environment, it can also be a direct threat to human health.
Even more unreasonable is the fact that apart from having to suffer the consequences of pollution, the residents of a polluted area are also made to pay taxes to clean it up, even as they are forced to accept polluted sources of drinking water.
Furthermore, in 2000, it cost the central government a lot of effort and NT$6 billion (US$186 million) to clean up the nation's rivers.
Passing this proposal comes down to declaring that government efforts and the investment made by taxpayers to improve the environment was completely in vain.
This proposal is particularly unfair to the residents of Tainan City and Tainan County. Media reports say the Erjen River (二仁溪) and the Yenshui River (鹽水溪) are important pig farming areas and most likely to be affected.
If the Tainan area is really so highly polluted, residents of Tainan City, including myself, should speak up and protest. We feel that the river and the people's rights have been sold for profit by the legislators who approved this proposal.
Residents of the Tainan area have worked hard to establish various organizations to help protect the local environment.
It would be a great pity if all their work came to naught as a result of this proposal.
The proposal clearly violates principles of justice.
The question is, why would the legislature pass such a proposal, and just what is wrong with our system?
The most logical explanation for this is that the discussion and passing of legislation lacks transparency, effectiveness and supervision. This allowed lobby groups to successfully convince legislators to pass the amendment on behalf of the nation's pig farmers.
It would be a good idea to publish the names of the legislators who were for and against the proposal.
This would put them in the spotlight and submit them to the strictest scrutiny.
Under supervision and with the assistance of public welfare groups, these destroyers of the environment will have no place to hide.
Chen Jenn-yeu is a convener of the environmental education and research team at National Cheng Kung University. Yang Yung-nane is vice-convener of the same team.
Translated by Anna Stiggelbout
Weeks into the craze, nobody quite knows what to make of the OpenClaw mania sweeping China, marked by viral photos of retirees lining up for installation events and users gathering in red claw hats. The queues and cosplay inspired by the “raising a lobster” trend make for irresistible China clickbait. However, the West is fixating on the least important part of the story. As a consumer craze, OpenClaw — the AI agent designed to do tasks on a user’s behalf — would likely burn out. Without some developer background, it is too glitchy and technically awkward for true mainstream adoption,
On Monday, a group of bipartisan US senators arrived in Taiwan to support the nation’s special defense bill to counter Chinese threats. At the same time, Beijing announced that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had invited Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) to visit China, a move to make the KMT a pawn in its proxy warfare against Taiwan and the US. Since her inauguration as KMT chair last year, Cheng, widely seen as a pro-China figure, has made no secret of her desire to interact with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and meet with Xi, naming it a
A delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials led by Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is to travel to China tomorrow for a six-day visit to Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing, which might end with a meeting between Cheng and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The trip was announced by Xinhua news agency on Monday last week, which cited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Director Song Tao (宋濤) as saying that Cheng has repeatedly expressed willingness to visit China, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and Xi have extended an invitation. Although some people have been speculating about a potential Xi-Cheng
No state has ever formally recognized the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) as a legal entity. The reason is not a lack of legitimacy — the CTA is a functioning exile government with democratic elections and institutions — but the iron grip of realpolitik. To recognize the CTA would be to challenge the People’s Republic of China’s territorial claims, a step no government has been willing to take given Beijing’s economic leverage and geopolitical weight. Under international law, recognition of governments-in-exile has precedent — from the Polish government during World War II to Kuwait’s exile government in 1990 — but such recognition
RSS