Public Participation in the Coastal Environmental Issues – A Case Study on the Widening Project of Tai 11 Coast Highway

• Main Authors: Shu-Jung Tang, 唐淑蓉
• Other Authors: Hurng-Jyuhn Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/w3748q

碩士 === 國立東華大學 === 環境政策研究所 === 95 === For centuries, Taiwan coast area had been one of the important areas where our ancestors settled. Moving forward into 21st century, many countries emphasize to incorporate public participation into the process of public policy decision-making to alleviate the impacts caused by the policies and to accommodate citizens’ expectation. Taiwan Government has set the development target as an “Ocean Country.” We will expect that coastal environmental issues, in Taiwan, would be getting more complicated. Without thorough management mechanism, conflicts and protests against Government’s development policies under the target of ocean country would happen on and on. This thesis tries to identify the factors, causing conflicts and protests against Government’s coastal development projects, through analyzing a typical case of coastal environmental issue. “The Widening Project of Tai 11 Coast Highway” was chosen not only because issues of coastal environment, historical heritage, tourism, and transportation are involved, but because there were many protests initiated by the local citizen and environmental groups ever since the project started. The secondary data analysis, in-depth interview, and questionnaire were adopted. The argument of incorporating public participation into the procedures of public policy formation was elaborated. Also the dilemma of this widening project caused by insufficient public participation was demonstrated. The outcome shows that (1) stakeholders did not reach consensus during the policy formation; (2) socially, the information was not accessible and the decision-making process did not properly accommodate public participate; (3) legally, the public participation requirements set out under Environmental Impact Assessment Act were not followed completely; (4) local citizen could not comment on the engineering activities during the construction; (5) environmentally, landscape was damaged due to insufficient investigation in advance. The widening project is a typical case of failing to incorporate public participation into the procedures of policy formation. That is one of the main reasons why protests happened and the project delayed. Finally, eight recommendations are proposed: (1) communication platform should be established; (2) the costs of promoting public policies should be included in the government financial budget; (3) economic development programs, other than transportation projects, should be adopted for the regional development; (4) social values education should be stressed; (5) to enhance citizens’ consciousness and promote their participating ability; (6) information should be extensively distributed; (7) the public participation requirements should be legally enforced; (8) participation and discussion model should be established. A new public participation mechanism is proposed regarding the coastal environmental issues and hopefully it will contribute to the sustainable development of Taiwan coastal environment.