The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) appears to have stooped to being little more than an “environmental hygiene supervising agency,” a group of environmentalists said yesterday, expressing concerns that Taiwan’s environment would be seriously jeopardized if no higher order environmental policies are formulated soon.
With yesterday being World Environment Day, environmental groups lambasted the EPA for spending the day on a “National Borough Chief Eco-Summit,” which invited more than 200 borough chiefs who have led their community members in street, park or public bathroom cleanups.
While some of the borough chiefs received medals for their achievements in cleaning up their areas, all participated in an after-ceremony banquet where borough chiefs could exchange cleaning experience and tips.
“This is an extremely ironic and sad event — with the EPA being the highest environmental protection governmental authority, they are ‘killing chickens with bull knives,’” Taiwan Environment Protection Union secretary-general Lee Chou-han (李卓翰) said, using an expression that means doing a trivial job with advanced tools.
What the borough-chief campaign actually does is push the responsibility of carbon reduction on the public, instead of putting it on the shoulders of the government and large businesses who should be the responsible parties, Green Party Taiwan (GPT) secretary-general Pan Han-shen (潘翰聲) said.
The group was not criticizing the borough chief meeting, per se, “but the EPA has demonstrated a long-term neglect of more important environmental issues since the government took office and this is dangerous for the island’s environment,” he said.
“We are not saying that it is not a good thing to laud local officials for making their neighborhoods clean, but this shouldn’t be the core of the EPA’s responsibilities,” Taiwan Academy of Ecology chairperson Liao Pen-chuan (廖本全) said.
Since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office in May last year, the EPA has promoted several “frivolous environmental hygiene policies,” yet it is giving the green light to major development proposals, that could seriously harm Taiwan’s water and soil, Liao said.
For example, the EPA recently established an “Eco Life” Web site for people to exchange cleaning tips, allocated billions of dollars to “beautifying and cleaning communities” and last month in a press conference announced the result of a six-month project to find the best angle to position street-washing vehicle nozzles for maximum dusting efficiency.
By focusing on the minute carbon reductions that are contributed by individuals, Liao said, “Not only does this demonstrate that [EPA minister] Stephen Shen (沈世宏) is a ‘minister of narrow vision,’ it is a telltale sign that the whole administrative system of this country has problems.”
While the EPA’s full name clearly states that its responsibility is to be the defender of the nation’s soil and environment, “the EPA has become an agency that focuses on ‘wiping the asses’ of polluters, instead of regulating pollution from their sources,” he said.
GPT former secretary-general Calvin Wen (溫炳原) said that while Shen spent yesterday afternoon at the street-cleaning borough chief summit, he did not even show up at the National Energy Conference in April.
“[Environmentalists] are disturbed by that,” he said.
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