The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) recently unveiled its draft “national action plan for combating climate change” bill. It is a clear demonstration of the government’s commitment to meet international standards decided at the Paris Climate Agreement, which came into force earlier this month. The bill is to be commended for setting out the main principles of the national response to climate change.
Although Taiwan is not a member of the UN, it must nevertheless abide by international norms.
This is generally recognized, with the underlying sanctions and restraints placed upon Taiwan by the 1994 Atlantic Tunas Convention Authorization Act being a prime example.
In addition to pressure from top-down international environmental agreements, Taiwan — as with every other country — must also respond to internal societal pressure.
The government must therefore draw up a series of policies, tailored to each ministry, to adapt the nation to climate change and reduce its carbon emissions, while working to achieve a large degree of consensus among the public.
The ratification of the Paris Climate Agreement represents the world’s gradual shift away from fossil fuels as the basis of a global “brown economy,” toward a sustainable, forward-looking “green economy” — and a rapid shift to so-called “smart industries.”
Countries that can position themselves as leaders in this field will be able to lead the way in establishing the next 20 to 30 years of economic and social development, and set technical standards and the barriers to entry for competitors.
Taiwanese observers are well aware of the challenges facing Taiwan, involving the transformation of its energy supply and industries, a change in how air pollution is managed to address the public’s concerns — and a general reorganization of society.
Due to long-term planning for the future, a number of the nation’s biggest energy consumers, most prolific polluters and emitters of carbon dioxide — within industry and the energy sector — are already engaged in a process of transformation and are proactively carrying out research and innovation.
Those firms that continue to pursue rent-seeking tactics of demanding fossil fuel subsidies — and in doing so externalize the environmental costs — have already reached a tipping point; they must now rapidly switch over to a new development model or face the consequences.
This pressure to immediately reduce carbon emissions is precisely what Nobel laureate and former Academia Sinica president Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) has been advocating for so many years.
When examining the transformation to low-carbon societies in different countries around the world, a key ingredient is the participation of the wider public, which requires communication and dialogue.
Faced with push-back from various interest groups, there is a necessary learning curve in order to find a way forward for society.
The problem is particularly acute for the energy sector and industry, for which it is even more important to carry out a comprehensive discourse with society, build approval for the way forward, construct the right systems and structures and formulate forward-thinking policies.
By going through this societal learning curve, the fundamentals of sustainable thinking can then permeate local and central government, influence the formation of industrial development, societal values and then build a strong consensus.
The transformation to a low-carbon society requires the continued, long-term systematic communication and management of risk.
The EPA’s bill, despite dabbling with the concept of discussion forums, places the onus on adjusting and alleviating the effects of climate change on individual government departments.
It fails to recognize that the push for sustainability must come from the ground up: industry, society and academia, so that the whole of society can mobilize through a diverse range of networks in order to develop a consensus on the way forward.
In its current form, the bill places an emphasis on policy and technology.
Although there is nothing wrong with this as such, it is short on measures designed to allow for participation in internationally developed technology programs, instead favoring domestic technology and the ideas of Taiwan’s much maligned professional political class.
The vision and the goals laid out in the draft are good, but in terms of the goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050, provisions are yet to be made for public participation and dialogue, and to produce a consensus thereof, in the basic principles and actual content of the policies, for the draft to have any legitimacy.
There are still many questions among the wider society about how the government arrived at its policy objectives, whether they are viable and whether the administration will actually be able to achieve sustainable low carbon goals.
Articles 8 and 10 of the basic principles address the aforementioned issues of actively engaging with the communication of the risk posed by climate change and how to establish the conditions for the participation of the public and of those who will be affected, for good or ill, and to put these all together, incentivizing local and central governments, industry, civic groups, the public and academia, to promote the development of a diverse network platform on which climate change action can be taken.
Under this framework, and within the policy content of the draft law, the related plans to adjust and retard warming, in their various aspects and on the technical levels and policy orientation, are certainly comprehensive.
However, there is still a serious lack of diverse mechanisms for risk management and communication and social participation, as well as — the most important of all, — provisions for consensus and dialogue within wider society.
In the portions of the bill concerning the changes to be made, with the exception of the eight major areas in which these adjustments are to be made, it is important to reinforce research into multi-aspect risk areas, communication and social participation.
For example, the section on reinforcing disaster risk assessment and management, legislators should — in addition to the provisions on the technical side of things for early warnings, simulations and overall risk assessment and management that are already in place — also reinforce the aforementioned issues and provisions on diversity, participation and communication.
The public is familiar with the effects and experiences of the several major natural disasters that have occurred in Taiwan over the past decade or so, and so it should be eminently possible to provide local knowledge and viewpoints to contribute to the policymaking process as regards climate change adjustments and slowing.
In the sections of the draft on greenhouse gas reduction, whether it be for making changes to the energy structure, transference to “green” innovations, green distribution, sustainable construction practices or low-carbon areas, sustainable farming or circular economy networks, participation of the society as a whole, and diverse government and social drivers, with the public as the main impetus for the implementation and maintenance of all of this, should be present throughout.
Therefore, this section should include comprehensive research, participation platforms for risk management and communication, and mechanisms for participation in implementation.
Only then will it be possible to facilitate the gradual establishment of social development drivers to bring about transformations of energy, industry and a progressive economy and, through diversity, innovation and competition, bring about a transformative economic mindset.
Although this will be brought about predominantly by the public, the public is, generally speaking, relatively unfamiliar with the issues pertaining to climate change and, therefore, it should all be translated into language that society will understand, and this is where academia comes into the equation, undertaking research and development into a way to translate these ideas and to convey risk, and establish a platform on which action can be taken.
In addition, social participation can contribute, via diverse participation and the scope and direction of this translation of concepts.
Now that we have already arrived at the point that climate change poses diverse and serious risks on a global level, it is all the more important that we allow for public participation and engagement, in order to avoid, with increased globalization, the creation of a new class of unemployed, dispossessed, climate change refugees, who will in turn lead to a fierce political backlash among those who feel they have no voice, as we recently witnesses in the US election.
Chou Kuei-tien is director of National Taiwan University’s Risk Society and Policy Research Center.
Translated by Edward Jones and Paul Cooper
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