Article 1 of Taiwan’s Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境影響評估法) says: “This Act is formulated to prevent and mitigate the adverse impact of development activity on the environment in order to achieve the goal of environmental protection.”
It clearly states that an environmental impact assessment (EIA) is an investigation into a development project. As such, an EIA can only state that there are no environmental concerns in a passive approval of development, rather than serve as an active tool of encouragement or approval because the project has positive benefits, such as improving economic development or traffic.
It is therefore inappropriate to hope, like some do, that an EIA will be quickly passed to accelerate the construction of a new Suhua Highway or the Suhua improvement project.
Whether the government goes ahead with construction of a new Suhua Highway or an improvement project should be decided based on a review of the benefits and drawbacks. It should also plan routes and construction methods, specify the environmental impact and propose response strategies to the Environmental Impact Assessment Review Committee. The committee members should only conduct a reasonable investigation of the environmental impact of the project and propose preventative environmental measures or alterations in order to lower the risk.
They don’t have the right to say to the developer: “This is a good plan, go for it.”
At most, an EIA only has one more function, and that is to demand that the developer propose an alternative plan and explain why it chose one of several plans and why that plan has less impact on the environment than the others. An EIA should not deal with a plan’s cost and benefits or whether the developer’s budget is sufficient.
The technical difficulty of building a new Suhua Highway is an issue for the engineering unit and raising money is the responsibility of the financial unit. In addition, how to respond to public calls for giving Hualien residents a safe road home is a political consideration. All these issues are unrelated to an EIA.
An EIA should serve as a checkpoint, not the driving force of a project. Generally speaking, even if an EIA is passed, it is passed conditionally. For example, if the result of the EIA is that part of a project has a serious impact on the environment, the EIA committee may require that the developer take supplementary measures.
The developer must evaluate how much the extra work will cost and whether it is feasible from an engineering aspect. If the budget is insufficient or if the project is not feasible from an engineering point of view, the project cannot be continued, even if the EIA was passed.
The debate over the construction of a new Suhua Highway and the alternative route has been going on for some years. It seems inevitable that the construction project will go on because of public pressure following the disaster last month. However, the government should explain if all the problems that have delayed the construction project have been resolved. Blaming all the problems on the EIA is just irresponsible.
I would like to emphasize again that an EIA should focus on the “what” and the “how,” instead of the “why.”
It should confine the discussion to the issue at hand and review the impact and strategies related to the environment based on the content of a proposal. The committee members should not take the initiative to ask why a proposal is submitted. Nor should they ask whether the Hualien residents can take the train home if the Suhua Freeway is not built.
Chen Wen-ching is a researcher at the Environment and Development Foundation.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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