The government's actions to promote sustainable development have been long on style and short on substance, environmentalists and industrialists said yesterday.
Their criticism reflects the outrage demonstrated by hun-dreds of people who left satirical signatures on a Web site set up by the National Council for Sustainable Development so that citizens could voice their support for the Taiwan Declaration on Sustainable Development, which President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) signed last Saturday.
Many people logged onto the council's Web site to protest by using fake names. The names were a combination of homonyms of Chinese surnames and words that suggested the government was good at coming up with slogans but less good at acting on them. Examples included "No Policy" and "Fake Conservation."
The Environmental Protection Administration, the council's secretariat, deleted all the fake names on Monday. As of yesterday, the Web site contained only 60 signatures.
The fake names reflect environmentalists's criticism that the government promotes sustainable development in purely formalistic ways.
"From advertising, inviting the public to sign on the Internet, to holding campaign rallies to show its resolve, we see a government indulging itself in formalism," said Eric Liou (劉銘龍), secretary-general of the Environmental Quality Protection Foundation.
Liou said that the government selectively promotes sustainable development because it is reluctant to change policies involving the exploitation of resources.
"A country aiming to pursue sustainable development would never build so many unnecessary waste incinerators," Liou said.
Niven Huang (
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