The nation’s first environmental trust fund was launched yesterday, a product of the joint efforts of three enterprising environmental activists.
The Environmental Protection Administration said it had approved an application by three landowners — Wu Je-fon (吳杰峰), Wu Yu-chiao (吳語喬) and Liu Hsiu-mei (劉秀美) — to entrust their shared forest land in Hsinchu County to a receiving organization, the Society of Wilderness (SOW).
An environmental trust is a means to entrust property owned by an individual or a group to a civic organization for the purpose of environmental protection and sustainable management.
Wu Je-fon, a tree-climbing coach and the settler of the trust, said that while the trio shared the same ideals on promoting environmental protection and education, they believed their land could be better managed by a professional environmental non-governmental organization such as the SOW.
After spending a year searching for their ideal land, they purchased a forest area in 2007 and decided to entrust their land to the SOW for permanent management. A mutual contract clearly defining the purpose of the land — sustainable environmental education, once every three years, for a non-limited time — was signed.
The environmental trust is now accounted as a charitable trust under the Trust Act (信託法). The trust settlers will continue to have right of property, but the right of use will be reserved for the purpose of environmental protection.
The EPA said its role would be to monitor both the trustees and the trust settlers and to ensure they fulfill their duties under the contract.
Asked about obstacles that they had encountered in the past three years, SOW conservation director Tony Chou (周東漢) said the main problem was the laws regulating land use.
“We have met cases of settlers wanting to entrust their land to us, but they were barred from doing so because their land was designated as agricultural land and was restricted to agricultural use according to the Agricultural Development Act (農業發展條例),” he said.
Since construction at the Kuokuang Petrochemical Technology naphtha cracker complex in Dacheng Township (大城), Changhua County, was halted in April, a number of environmental groups have proposed that the Dacheng Wetlands (大城濕地) be protected through an environmental trust.
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