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Democratization Promotion or Expertise Enhancement?
-The Consensus Conference in the SEA on Sea Reclamation
by Solid Wastes
Cyf9@ulive.pccu.edu.tw
Author: Ying-Feng Chen
Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration
Chinese Culture University
Research Fellow in Risk Society and Policy Research Center in
National Taiwan University
Paper Presented in ISESEA-6 TaiwanConference.
October 19-22, 2017.
National Taiwan University: Taipei, Taiwan.
Abstract
Ever since the EIA/SEA systems had been adopted in Taiwan, many have
questioned the lacking of both “citizen’s participation” and “scientific expertise”.
Recently, the EPA has lost a series of administrative lawsuits and forced to revoke the
EIA verdict. In 2009, “experts panels” has been introduced in strengthening the
capacity in robust scientific reviews, while the results received inconsistent
evaluations. In 2012, the SEA on a new policy, Sea Reclamation by Solid Disposals,
also encountered great social suspicion. Therefore, in addition to remaining experts
panels on the expertise side, the EPA also held a precedent consensus meeting in order
to fill the gap of democratic deficit.
This article explored the influence of consensus meetings on this SEA, and found
lay citizens were capable of delivering reasonable guidelines for scientific risks issues
after deliberations. In addition, the consensus meeting held by neutral third party lent
a hand in shaping mutual trust, and the principle guidelines also assisted to build
focuses in in-depth discussion among experts. Therefore, this article concluded the
lacking of scientific expertise, including little focus and consensus could be made, in
the EIA was mostly resulted from lacking of civil participation. In other words, the
deficit of democracy led to the deficit of expertise. Therefore, in order to
fundamentally solve the controversy of scientific risk issues, it was suggested that
public participation, instead of being viewed as a red tape procedure in experts’
domination, should be a channel of empowerment in providing social rationality via
transforming citizens into informed, responsible, and active participants and
discussants. The final goal is to enable citizens to choose and imagine different forms
of risk regulations and risk perspectives.
Key Term: EIA, consensus meeting, democratization of science, public
participation, lay citizen
Background
Ever since 1980s in Taiwan, the enormous amount of environmental costs
resulting from rapid economic growth were widely recognized. Starting from “anti-
DuPont” activism in central Taiwan, environmental protests bloomed within different
parts of the country. Therefore, in order to seek for a more robust way to review
environmental risks brought by developments, the administration has formulated
“Environmental Impact Assessment Act”(EIA Act) and therefore established a review
body “EIA Committee” (EIC afterwards) under Taiwan’s EPA. The institution design
was to conduct comprehensive EIA review and monitoring through this politically
independent mechanism.
According to this act, whenever the developmental proposals or policies involving
noticeable risks on the environment, including ecosystem, living standards, social
economy, and local culture, the EPA or EPA subordinating offices in local counties are
obligated to ask the developers to submit EIA reports, which will be reviewed by the
EIA committee. However, while lacking of holistic view of comprehensive plan on land
use, many development proposals, particularly those promoted by Industry Bureau
(under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, MOEA) and local governments, often
coarsely passed EIA reviews with very little regard of local communities and external
social costs given obscuring rationality behind zoning and economic efficiency(蕭新
煌 1996).
While the experts and government officials in the EIC tried to maintain a review
framework based on scientific rationality, it has been difficult for lay citizens to find
their place in the mechanism. Although citizens were allowed to give opinions, to audit,
or even directly participate in public hearing throughout the EIA, citizen’s efficacy
remained low because their sentimental perceptions and life experiences did not carry
much weight in the reviewing process, owing to the fact that the experts still held the
key upon decision-making(范玫芳 2007).
However, with the thriving massive activism and campaigns from public and
environmental groups, the EIA process on major development projects often turned into
long-lasting stagnancy because more stakeholders and environmental parameters were
included in the process. However, if the EIC chose to utilize administrative expediency
by granting “conditional approval “or “majority voting”, it would be foreseeable that
concerning citizens would boycott these decisions by protests and environmental
lawsuits.
After the imposition of Administrative Procedural Act and Free Information Act,
the idea of citizen’s lawsuit was introduced in Taiwan and broadly used in appeals
against controversial EIA review results. From 2008, many decisions made by EIC had
been either revoked or asked to enhance the density of citizen’s participation by
administrative courts. Those verdicts did not only re-interpret the purpose of EIA Act
by commanding the EIC to build more procedurally comprehensive substantial reviews
incorporated precautious principles and public welfare, but also implied that a certain
level of citizen’s participation might be compulsory in the EIA(黃源銘 2012). Owing
to these verdicts, the EIC became more cautious in coping with broadening citizen’s
participation and lifting reviewing standard in the EIA(陳潁峰 2015).
Encountering the pressures from the court and public, the EPA tried to keep
balance between broadening public participation and upholding quality of scientific
review. The EPA thus introduce a series of policy measures such as experts’ panels and
public hearings in order to reconcile the conflicts between science professionalism and
democratic deliberation. However, without meaningful and interactive participation by
lay citizens, all those measures did not bring significant impacts.
In 2012, the EPA was proposing a new policy of waste management called “Sea
Reclamation by Solid Disposals”, which aimed to process incombustible solid wastes
in coastal area because of the increasingly difficulty finding land-based dumping sites
without receiving adversity from local communities. In this particular case, Taiwan’s
EPA had double-folded roles of both developer and reviewers. On one hand, the EPA
was a policy initiator because it was in charge of national waste management policy.
On the other hand, the EPA was also the coordinator for the SEA (strategic
environmental assessment review on policies).
Therefore, in order to prevent conflicts of interests and further public criticism, the
EPA decided to adopt new reforms enlarging public participation. While holding a
series of public hearings across the country, the EPA, as the policy initiator, also
introduced several deliberative measures such as a policy forum, basically a stakeholder
meeting including various levels of government agencies, scholars, and enterprises, and
most important of all, series of citizen consensus meeting were held in 2012. Those
efforts were not only rare, but also illustrated a new path for the EIA system staggered
between professionalism and democracy.
Due to the fact that SEA was a review process on the policy blueprint involving
national goals of development and public values. The wide arrays of issues included in
the SEA decisions make it essentially a more suitable arena for public engagement and
debates. Therefore, the consensus meeting has a tremendous meaning for Taiwan’s EIA
history.
The Origins of EIA and Its Function
Imitated from the US experience, the EIA system in Taiwan was designed to assess
environmental risks brought by development projects. However, unlike its US
counterpart as a risk evaluation mechanism, the EIA in Taiwan combined both roles of
risk evaluation and risk management because the EIC holds the veto power on
developmental projects. Therefore, the scientific experts was inevitably bestowed the
role of decision makers, and in order to make that decision, eventually they would have
to weight a wide arrays of environmental and non-environmental factors(葉俊榮 1999).
By granting scientific experts unchecked power in making evaluations and defining
public value and public welfares, the legitimacy of EIA decisions soon turned into a
political debate.
The institutional design of “veto” of EIC was created based on the rationale to
build public trust by transferring decision-making power to so-called “independent and
impartial” experts outside state apparatus. However, without public monitoring and
checking system, the “no accountability” feature of exercises in the EIC actually had
little merits in developing social trust(張英磊 2011). After two decades of practices,
scholars and court verdicts both suggested that, according to the original idea of EIA
Act, the absolute decision power of EIC was inappropriate, for those experts had turned
into decision makers of risk management(戴興盛, 康文尚 et al. 2013) (賴宗福 2009,
黃源銘 2010).
On the surface, the EIC members holds the power in determining the fate of
development projects. However, because policies and most mega projects were tightly
associated with goals of national development agendas, the dimension of political
concerns, though may seem incompatible with design of EIA as a politically neutral
mechanism, was essentially unavoidable in the review process. Herein Taiwan’s EIA
review encountered a daunting dilemma as follows: on one hand, the public had a very
high expectation on EIA for it was the most powerful instrument in preserving
environmental interests, while on the other also showed a high level of distrust against
it because the political influence from the government was not accountable. That was
the reason the EIA constantly turned into a vicious cycle of conflicts and stagnancy.
The potential problems of the EIA
From empirical experience, an efficient EIA system has to meet three requirement.
First, it has to be a legally sound system allowing public participation and power check
among administrative, legislative, and judicial branches of the government. Second, the
EIA report has to be robust; Third, there has to be sufficient mitigation and monitoring
measures in the EIA process(Momtaz and Kabir 2013) . By this lens, the inefficiency
and gridlocks in Taiwan’s EIA system mostly resulted from its institutional incapability
to conduct robust reviews, both socially and scientifically.
Firstly, in terms of institutional formation, aside from 9 government
representatives, the EIC composed of 14 experts, who were only selected for their
expertise in a general sense. In their two-year term, these 14 experts had to review
“every single case” submitted to the EIC. It was unrealistic to expect that these 14
experts, even most of them were credited for prestigious scholars, to review all cases in
an efficient and robust way.
While the numerous amount of cases would inevitably curb EIC members’
comprehensive understanding on any particular case, the filtering mechanism of EIA
system was quite flawed. First of all, the EIA used “size of developmental projects”,
instead of ecological and social sensitivity, as the parameter determining whether the
projects need to enter EIA process and therefore led to the facts that developers would
use different loopholes such as fragmented sites to prevent this administrative
procedure.
Unlike its counterpart in US may retain its public responsibility by legally
allowing massive public participation and intervention from judicial and legislative
branches, the EIA in Taiwan fell short of the associated legal resources and political
leverage to prevent from arbitraries in administrative department. While most projects
were under government guarantee beforehand by having memorandum or contracts
signed by MOEA, the EIC members had to review those cases with limited leverage.
Owing to time pressures, most of the EIA cases ended up in passing the EIA review at
early stage without receiving a most robust review in the second stage(廖麗敏, 陳銘
薰 et al. 2011, 蕭宇君 2012). While the substantive reviews only exercised in the
second stage, the expediency thus restrained the public and EIC members from
understanding the full context of associated risks(陳仲嶙 2014, 康文尚 and 戴興盛
2015).
The second factor influencing the efficiency of Taiwan’s EIA was the poor quality
of EIA reports. According to Taiwan’s EIA system, the EIA reports was submitted by
developers. Owing to their high interests in passing the EIA in timely manner, the
consulting companies were often asked to conceal, speculate or ignore possible
environmental risks, sometimes even forge fake information in order to avoid further
robust review. While the infrastructure such as basic geological and marine database
remained weak, it was difficult to reach agreement in the review process(呂雅雯 1999).
Also, owing to the fact that Taiwan’s EIA did not formulate principle guidelines
for reviewing methods and standards, it was extremely difficult for EIC members to
develop common grounds while reviewing EIA reports. Therefore, the determining
factor was heavily bear on the subjective judgment of each EIC member, if public
monitoring was absent(葉欣誠、劉銘龍、於幼華 2004). Because EIC memberships
were only part-time position for most EIC members, who only played a passive role in
the process, the EIA reports could easily pass the review if the EIC members failed to
detect potential risks and to keep tracking them.
Also, in the original design of EIA, the “alternative plans” should be a crucial part
of scoping and EIA reports, However, in the real world practices, the alternative plans,
on which there was hardly any standard in reviewing them, were neglected by the
developers and EIC members and developed into an “optional” sidekick. Sometimes
the developers evened specified that there was no ”alternative” available other than the
designated projects(林三加 2014).
In fact, the empirical evidence showed that, though may not base on high
technology, most alternatives proposed by local lay citizens, who are more
knowledgeable on local condition and future vision, are relatively more efficient in
reducing both future maintenance costs and environmental impacts and could develop
up to the level that the EIA are not even needed(Schumacher 2010, Lawrence 2013). If
public wisdom could be collected at the stage of scoping, the efficiency of the review
and the effectiveness of the mitigation of EIA could be greatly enhanced(Eccleston
2011).
The EIA practices in Germany suggest that robust scoping in which government,
experts, and public could perform active roles in early stage would improve the quality
of EIA reports(Wende 2002). In other words, the earlier the public could participate in
EIA process, the quality of scoping and EIA reports could be improved. That makes
another connection between public participation and the performance of EIA.
The third influencing factor was the “mitigation and monitoring system”, which
might be the most flawed aspect of Taiwan’s EIA system. As described earlier, most
proposals passed the EIA review without substantive review. While some cases were
granted “conditional pass” by EIC members, there was not clear monitoring and
tracking system to ensure the development projects would comply with prior promises.
The most common scenario was that the developers violating the EIA conclusion
only received small-amount fine, sometimes could be voided through appeals or
administrative lawsuits, or even got to legalize the violation by submitting another
analysis report. Both procedures, while might take years to finalize, provide incentives
for developers to purposely violate EIA conclusion and to create fait accompli in forcing
the EIC to validate it afterwards. Therefore, without binding monitoring and credible
sanctions, the so-called “conditional pass” may appear nothing more than EIC’s
expediency in avoiding further discussion on environmental risks of proposing projects.
To be concluded, from above three lenses, the inefficiency in Taiwan’s EIA could
be portrayed in two patterns. The first one suggested that the exclusion of public
participation led to the marginalization of public opinions in the risk debates. The
second, ironically, suggested the monopoly of scientific experts in the decision-making
process also did not contribute to more scientifically robust assessment, and the
professionalism in the review was widely doubted. Therefore, the EIA in Taiwan
actually encountered deficit in both dimension of “professionalism” and “democracy”.
To tackle with these problems, the EPA in Taiwan aimed to introduce new systems in
both tracks respectively. In the “scientific” side, EPA tried to introduce “experts’ panels”
into the system since 2009, while auditing, public hearing and other citizen’s based
actions were adopted in “democratic” dimension.
The Dead End of Experts Panels
The experts panels were formed by experts recommeded by a wide array
stakeholders when the EIC ecnountered sceintific controversy. Through in-depth
discussion, the sceintific facts could be clrified and stood as powerful reference for
EIC’s final decision. While this mechanism has been adopted in US EPA for years, its
implication of distincting sceince from politics often hurdled broad discussion and led
to malfuction of the EIA(Sarewitz 2004, Ascher, Steelman et al. 2010).
However, the purpose of risk assessment was inherently a group discussion of
sceintific facts, and therefore the process could by no means be monopolied by the
experts. The active participation of various perspectives is necessary because the
purpose of risk assessment is to comprehend uncertainty and to discover knowlede
gap(Rosa, Renn et al. 2014). It would inappropriate to assume the experts are only
legitimate body to review sceintific risks(Schweizer, Renn et al. 2014).
Besies, the notion that the experts would make better decisions than lay citizens
was proven defective lately. Plous has long questioned the “objectivity” of the experts
because the facts that decision-makers choose to believe are easily influenced by social
perceptions and personal bias(Plous 1993). In fact, the rationalities of experts was by
nature socially construct, and therefore tightly connected with existing social beliefs,
values, social images, and risk characters. Thus, it would be unrealistic to expect those
experts to remain fully “autonomous” and “objective” from the society. (Forsyth 2003,
Pielke 2007) The dichtomy between “experts and lay citizens” and “facts and
values”presumed by modern political system, which led to the distinction of politics
and sceince in the the EIA, is not only pointless in regard of seeking sceintific truth, but
also very inclined to produce risk decisions neglecting social preferences(Latour 2004).
The other major downside of sceintists dominating risk decisions was the
relatively weak resilience of minority groups was often ignored. In fact, according to
EIA Act, in addition to the impacts to the natural environment, the influence to the
social context is also considered a crucial part of EIA . Therefore, in order to prevent
minority groups from being marginalized and deprived, systems such as participation
of affcted stakeholders, mitigation mechnism, the robust review on alternatives, and
post-EIA monitoring are greatly required(Eccleston 2011).
However, with little emphasis on mutually-subjective way in locating, tracking
and identifying stakeholders in the EIA and SEA, the academia in general lacked
resources and expertise on evalute social factors, because basic research database on
key social groups or areas were scanty(劉恆昌 2000). Therefore, for the reason that
the citizen’s knowledge and experience were absent in the EIA, there was barely any
assessment models on social impacts of the developments existing as a guideline(項靖,
蔡偉銑 et al. 2014).
Although the EPA were satisfied with this new mechanism; however, it received
criticisms for it seems to fail to reach the original goal on turning science into “facts
trusted by different stakeholders”, for the rationality of experts have difficulty finding
common grounds because of the constraints in administrative institutions. Rather, it was
the direct observation from local lay citizens received better trust and more efficient
conclusion(徐世榮 and 許紹峰 2001).
Therefore, although expert meeting includes representatives from local residents,
while lacking direct participation, mitigation and monitoring mechanism, the experts’
perception toward risks were limited and lacking reliable social foundation because
local knowledge were excluded in the system. Besides, the decision on development
actually includes many subjective value judgments; therefore, the EIA conclusion made
solely on scientific facts and solely by isolated experts could hardly earn public trust.
The Democratic Deficit Led to Professionalism Deficit
In Taiwan’s EIA procedures, the lay citizens could only have access in second-
stage review; however, with the fact that most cases would pass the EIA in the first
stage, the public could only receive the result by in a passive form of public
demostration. Therefore, while legally speaking the citizens have rights to participate
the EIA, there were hardly any chances for local perspectives could be discussed and
analyzed in systematic manner(何玉鳳 2005).
Even the citizens have the chances of being invited in the EIA meetings, they were
only granted three minutes each person to express their opinion, Therefore, the so called
public participation only ended up with passive protesting(杜文苓、施麗雯、黃廷宜
2007). Furthermore, the embedded dichotomy between academic science and lay
citizens’ knowledge in the EIA framework also prevented ethical and epistemological
narratives in local communities from being credited in the academic discussion(杜文
苓 and 施佳良 2014, 施佳良 2015).
Although the latest results of environmental lawsuits mainly affirmed the necessity
of citizen’s participation, there were barely clear sign that the institution was able to
integrate citizen’s opinions and experiences into effective narratives in decision-making
process. This incapacity therefore forced the citizens to exert social activism or political
measures to paralyze EIA process, and the gridlock in turn induce the government to
adopt a more authoritarian manner to limit citizen’s participation. The vicious cycle
eventually triggered the escalation of political rivalry between the government and
affected stakeholders(Chen 2011).
Therefore, the democratic deficit and professional deficit in the EIA were by no
means two isolated propositions but rather causal ones. It was the democratic deficit of
the EIA procedure that caused scarcity of diverse knowledge sources, and further led to
the unsatisfactory quality of scientific reviews in the EIA. Therefore, the well-divided
improvement in both sectors in a separated manner would do very little merits in
enhancing EIA quality, let alone solving risk conflicts.
An Attempt to Enlarge Civil Participation: Consensus Meetings on SRSD
In 2014, there was an unprecedented measure introduced in the SEA procedure on
the policy of “Sea Reclamation by Solid Disposals” (SRSD afterwards). During the
process, not only a series of experts panels and public hearings were held across the
country, a new mechanism, citizen’s consensus meeting, was introduced in 2012 to
increase deliberative elements and to better respond to the court verdicts which clearly
specified the importance of citizen’s participation in the EIA procedure.
The Big Picture: the Hardship of Solid Waste Disposal
According to the EPA, there are 3.8 to 7 million cubic meters of solid wastes
require final disposal solution. While it has been difficult in finding suitable sites for
landfills, illegal dumping often occurred across countries for lacking of final disposal
solutions. To the EPA, although the reuse of debris in the incinerators will remain an
ongoing direction, a more efficient way in processing solid waste was thus an important
task. The EPA’s new proposal was to transform solid wastes into the building materials
in sea reclamation, particularly for commercial ports.
However, the promotion of SRSD policy soon faced two stringent problems.
Firstly, the potential in commercializing solid wastes was quite uncertain. Although the
so-called “safe wastes” (no pollutants included) has less environmental impacts and
widely adopted in reclamation projects, most port agencies have their own supply
system of raw materials. While solid wastes are not produced based on commercial
demands, it is quite uncertain that the demand and supply could match in timing and
volumes.
Secondly, the costal condition around Taiwan is technically less suitable for SRSD.
Unlike the costal environments in Japan and Singapore consisting natural impermeable
stratums, the geology feature in Taiwan does not have this advantage and therefore the
artificial impermeable engineering constructions have to be undertook at sea beds
where located 15 meters under the surface. How could the constructions survive
typhoons, earthquakes and great tides are still contesting technologically. Not only
there are very few prior cases abroad, the huge costs of maintenances and redeeming
measures for possible damages also make the policy quite controversial.
The Adoption of Consensus Meeting
The consensus meeting, a mechanism originating from Danish Parliament and
aiming to promote comprehensive understanding of public issues, has been introduced
in Taiwan’s debatable disputes in this decade and brought effects in promoting public
participation and strengthening the legitimacy of policies(盧美秀, 蔣欣欣 et al. 2006,
蕭元哲, 鄭國泰 et al. 2006, 林祐聖 2010).
In the scenario of citizens’ consensus meeting, while experts still play a crucial
role in providing information, but unlike their dominance in conventional scientific
review process, they have to persuade and interact with participants as citizens(林祐聖
2007). Therefore, the communication model would become different because the
experts have to use rationales and languages accessible by lay citizens. Among various
methods of public communication, consensus meeting performed better in terms of both
decision-making efficiency and democratic process, because it could better match
existing social networks and proceed with intensive discussions and interactions(Rowe
and Frewer 2000).
In July 2012, the EPA worked with the Professor Lin in National Taiwan
University and authorized the latter to establish Directory Board to recruit citizens with
different inclinations. After three meetings, the Board confirmed the procedures, topics,
list of experts and information needed in the consensus meetings. The Board then called
for citizens’ participation on the internet, and adopted stratum sampling based on their
locations and educational backgrounds. 20 citizens were selected out of 55 candidates,
and were given sufficient information by reading pamphlets and participating
preparatory meetings in prior of the official meetings.
In the official meetings in August, the discussion was separated into following 6
topics “robustness of legal system”, “waste- reducing from the sources”, “regulation of
the materials”, “openness of information”, “alternatives”, and ”monitoring and
controlling system” based on “people ask, experts answer” manner.
The consensus meeting took three weekends to conduct intensive discussions. In
the end of the meeting, the participants reached two agreements on the preliminary
conditions of this policy. First, the SRSD could proceed only when it operate under a
policy goal of “zero waste” (100% recycle) and sound integrative government
regulations. The policy could not proceed to next phase until the government and the
public reach consensuses after a series of social communications. Second, once upon
implementation, the SRSD must be confined in costal industrial parks and existing port
areas, and have to exert strict evaluation on input control, quality check, and monitoring
procedures.
Methods
Documents analysis and in-depth interviews were both adopted in this research.
For the former, this research collected government documents and media reports on
various kinds meetings such as policy forum, experts’ panels, public hearings, and
consensus meetings. For the latter, 11 interviewee, including EPA officials, activists,
experts, board members who intensively participate in consensus meeting and other
occasions, were selected to give better insights of discussion process.
Box1: List of the Interviewees
Position Where are they from
A
Board Member
Representative of civil groups
and experts
B Participants of Policy Form Representative of civil groups
and experts
C Officials in EPA Representative of government
D Officials in EPA Policy Formulator
E Participants of Experts’ Panel and
Consensus Meetings
Representative of civil groups
F Participants of Experts’ Panel
Participants of Policy Form
Experts
G Participants of Experts’ Panel and
Public Hearings
Civil Groups in Zhanghua
H Participants of Experts
’
Panel(Recommended by Civil
Group)
Civil Groups in Tainan
I Participants of Experts
’
Panel(Recommended by Civil
Group)
Civil Groups in Tainan
J Participants of EIC, Experts’ Panel
and Consensus Meetings
Experts
K College Professor Coordinator of Consensus
meetings
Research Findings
Based on the interview, this unprecedented consensus meeting has created great
differences in the EIA history. The author thus suggested that several findings could
also be made in this research.
1. The consensus meetings enhanced the effectiveness of SEA/EIA
By the effectiveness evaluation standard from Momtaz and Kabir, the consensus
meetings held on SRSD improved the effectiveness of the SEA/EIA.
The most striking fact of the consensus meetings was it contributed to the
adjourning of SRSD policy. Before the consensus meetings, the debates on the SRSD
was quite disperse and unsystematic. However, based on the conclusion made from
consensus meetings, there has been more focused and organized agenda presented in
the subsequent policy meetings. With more robust arguments brought in to process, the
EPA eventually realized that the SRSD, while it may help to consume certain amounts
of solid wastes, the policies failed to embrace a holistic view in wastes disposal,
particularly on recycling and source management. This policy was overly obsessed with
the idea of sea reclamation and neglected other alternatives. Therefore, the EPA took a
leap in withdrawing this policy from the SEA, and redesigned a more comprehensive
policy called “Proper Management of Household and Business Wastes” to replace
SRSD.
In terms of “encouraging public check and monitoring”. The consensus meetings
helped to enlarge the room for public discussion on the principle of the SEA and the
reshaped the focus of experts panels. It reassured the EPA officers possible scientific
risks and social obstacles of SRSD, and prevented the EPA from making mistakes by
merely following the directives of commanding officers.
In terms of improving the quality of EIA reports, the consensus meeting allowed
public, experts to go through the EIA reports in different perspectives. The participants
even gave intensive discussion on monitoring mechanism and alternatives, which was
omitted from original EIA reports. By redelivering a more comprehensive policy, the
EPA literally agreed to submit a more robust EIA report.
In terms of building mitigation and monitoring mechanism, the consensus
meetings provided a leverage for citizens to bargain with governments, and also an
incentives for administration and scientists to persuade doubtful public. Through the
meetings, the social framework for waste policy were socially constructed via
deliberative measures. The conclusion drawn in the meetings also affirmed the
importance of “social communication”, “citizen’s participation”, and ”public
monitoring”. Owing to the conclusion, the proposition “how does social actors
participate in policy formulation and monitoring” were listed as one of the five major
issues in the experts’ panels in 2014.
Therefore, the introduction of consensus meetings did not only enhanced social
participation, but also allowed the public to review the shortcomings of current risk
regulation frameworks. By adding social mechanism on public monitoring and
deliberation and bringing social dimension of scientific risks, it broke the scientists’
monopoly on risk discussion. In the end, the regulator had to directly respond to
expectation on risk management from societal actors.
2. Neutral third-party creates trusts
The conventional EIA system in Taiwan was to ask scientific experts to play a
“professional” and “impartial” third party in order to mitigate the conflicts. However,
while there has been an asymmetry of information between developers and lay citizens,
the public find themselves unprotected from the system and also incapable to change
final results through the EIA. Owing to the highly political characters of EIC and
unaccountable features of expert’s decision-making system, the independence of this
experts-based regime as neutral third party was often seriously doubted.
Even while a wider array of experts were recruited in the review procedure,
“lacking of trust” still appeared as an essential problem among stakeholders. The issues
such as “who would chair the meetings?”, “how could we trust these experts in other
disciplinary?” and “how did these experts were selected?” constantly impeded candid
deliberation in the discussion. Particularly in this case, while the EPA was both reviewer
and developer itself in the EIA, it would be much more difficult to earn public’s trust if
no further deliberative measures could be adopted.
Luckily, the EPA’s authorization of the Taiwan University team in handling
consensus meetings really created differences. The interviews suggested that the
University remained autonomous in deciding meeting procedures and how participants
were selected. Although the EPA attempted to block certain “radical” lay experts from
entering the meetings, the University insisted to invite them anyway despite the
contempt from the government.
Through this arrangement via a credible agency, the conclusions on the
preliminary condition of SRSD, though may not entirely satisfied all participants,
appeared “acceptable” for both parties. For the environmental groups, although the
conclusion did not clearly reject SRSD, the main claims such as “zero wastes”,
“operates in existing port areas”, and “broad social communication” were recorded as
the core value of this declaration. Even the EPA chief, who was the main promoter of
SRSD, admitted that the meetings were admirable, and the results deserved to be well
respected.
In the past practices, the term of “neutrality” often referred to “aloof in academic
expertise”. However, it was not the case in the risk communication because expertise
did not always presume neutrality(Kuhn 2012). When the experts’ decision-making
resented to interact with societal actors and further neglected scenarios in which science
could be practiced and understood, it could barely build mutual trust among different
camps. What could be learned from this series of citizen’s consensus meetings was that
the “neutrality” might suggest a power arrangement allowing all parties could equally
participate and change policy results, instead of an esteemed experts’ regime made the
decision for the public solely based on ambiguous scientific facts.
3. Citizen’s consensus shaped social foundation of scientific risks
Honestly speaking, the conclusion from citizen’s consensus meeting was not
necessarily more robust in regard of science. In fact, the two conditions suggested by
the participants were both very mundane standards easily comprehensible by various
social actors. However, it was the legitimacy of the procedure and the objective role of
third party intervention allowed the arbitrations feasible.
After the consensus meeting, the conclusions set clear tones on public discourse
of risks and guided the direction for future EIA meetings. More importantly, it bestowed
social threads and meanings upon risk discourse in public lives.
4. Citizen’s judgement as a drivers for reconciliation
Before the consensus meetings, while there were high volumes of tensions
between both sides, there were very few common grounds in the discussion. On one
hand, the EPA reiterated the importance of creating outlets for solid wastes and possible
economic benefits of SRSD policy by delivering the examples of Japan and Singapore.
On the other hand, environmental groups put most attentions on questioning EPA’s
regulatory capacity and addressing unpredictable risks in coastal areas. It was difficult
to make progress in any forms of review sessions.
Nonetheless, after two conclusion were drawn from consensus meetings, the
claims form both camps started to shows signs of congruity. The EPA turned their focus
on how to operate SRSD through “safe wastes” in existing port areas, while the
environmental groups made more efforts on comparing difference of costal geological
conditions and regulatory frameworks between Taiwan and other countries. The sphere
of real deliberation thus emerged under a better recognized common grounds.
The interviews showed that the EPA officials, who previously believed that lay
experts were unnegotiable fundamentalists dedicating to boycott the policy and
assumed the opinions from them had little merits, turned out to admit that the
conclusions were very valuable as policy references. The very similar transformation
also took place in the environmental groups for it might be political incorrect to oppose
“social consensus”.
During the deliberation process, the expression of diverse opinions was just a
beginning, the more difficult part was to reach an agreement between conflicting sides.
In experts’ panels, while both sides of experts bear expectation of their mandates, it
often took a secret meeting to create compromises without minding pressures behind.
(Chambers 2004, Warren 2007) However, in a democratic system, secrets meetings as
black box might create despicable images for meetings participants in public.
The consensus meetings therefore appeared as a moral buffer for conflicting sides
to step down without facing the pressures of backing off. On one hand, the participants
would be more willing to make compromises conforming to citizen’s conclusion for
their actions were less to blame. On the other hand, the citizen’s conclusion, as a
malleable principle, allowed both sides to make selective interpretations within this
categorical umbrella, and therefore provided more incentives for the participants to stay
in the institutional channel and to conduct future dialogues.
In this case, the buffer also bought time for the EPA to wait for better political
opportunities in promoting better solutions. According to the interviews, the EPA
bureaucrats had encountered a dilemma because the EPA chief was the major patron of
the SRSD policy, while they also came to realize that SRSD may cause public
suspicions. The conclusion from consensus meetings provided the opportunities for
EPA officials to “take it slow” and further withdrew the SEA review by taking
advantage of leaving office of the EPA chief when the reorganization of cabinet took
place in 2014.
5. Lay citizens were capable of risk discussion, though procedural justice might
be needed in guaranteeing substantial participation
Although it might be believed that the feature such as transparency, public
participation and elections in democratic system may contribute to better environmental
governance (Meadowcroft 2004, Li and Reuveny 2006). However, it does not
necessarily indicate that democracy would automatically generate better frameworks of
environmental governance nor assume a direct connection between civil participation
and good risk policies. Rather, it is the social capacity coping with different policy
options that really matters (Munslow and Ekoko 1995).
The myth that conventional wisdom on lay citizens being less capable in
comprehending scientific knowledge could be misleading because academic paradigms
tend to transform science into “rational” stats, models and diagrams. Those kinds
discourses has gone beyond cognitive patterns of lay citizens (Surowiecki 2004, Ran
2012).
Even though lay citizens could only criticize without giving constructive
suggestions, the criticism could also help the government to locate possible blind
spots(Coenen 2009). In fact, the preliminary conditions set by the participants in the
consensus meetings had very little things to do with scientific risks. However, the social
judgment and political arrangement proposed by the conclusion could effectively cope
with the impacts of scientific risks to social communities, and reinstate the scientific
risks into debatable social issues.
However, it is difficult for the society to spontaneously generate participation and
informativeness of citizens, because the risk knowledge against developers could barely
be produced in a systematic way. Therefore, if procedure justice, presuming political
and legal process guaranteeing the participation and informativeness, is absent in the
institution, the equal knowledge production required in the public discussion would be
hard to occur(Ottinger 2013). In that sense, even public participation is possible, the
participants also lack chances to review risk discourses and then adjust their own stands.
The empirical case in Canada showed that citizen’s participation could be severely
restrained when political pressures rendered or opposing knowledge
unavailable(Fitzpatrick, Sinclair et al. 2008). Therefore, the external support to a
more robust knowledge-producing system is essential for the undone science being
produced and discussed in a systematic way.
Having said that, the consensus meetings on SRSD appeared as a political
expediency to avoid political struggles among government branches. While lacking of
long-term institutional and financial support of this deliberative mechanism, the
learning effect had not been internalized as organization cultures and norms. After 2012,
there was no other consensus meeting held in the EIA/SEA review procedure, and thus
made this deliberative measure on SRSD an anomaly in EIA history.
6. Trust as the most important element in the risk communication
The interview results showed that the environmental groups, instead of opposing
the SRSD per say, revealed most of their distrust against regulatory capacity of the
government, particularly with the fact that toxic wastes were found managed
improperly in a regular base. In fact, most of the interviewee showed affirmation to
public hearings, experts’ panels and other participatory mechanisms, and believed that
institution itself could be well-intended. However, it was the distrust against possible
misbehaves of the government, including concealing information, departmental egoism,
benefiting corporations, coarse policy-making and regulatory incapacity that bothered
the civil groups the most.
These observations illustrated the importance of “trust” and “two-way
communication” (Peters, Covello et al. 1997, Sandman 2003, Earle 2010, Renn 2010).
Therefore, from citizens’ perspective, to make sure that the toxic wastes would kept
from being use as raw materials was much important than the scientific proposition
“ how safe the sea reclamation is?”. The former narrative, while appeared more crucial
in affecting public perception of risks, is a matter of credibility of government’s
regulatory capacity rather the clarification of scientific risk. In other words, the impacts
of risks could hardly situated unless the government is capable controlling those risks.
In SRSD case, though the EPA delivered the positive examples of Japan and
Singapore, the civil groups did not only questioned the difference of geological
condition between Taiwan’s coastal areas and ones in those countries, but also
addressed a widespread doubts on to the site-selection process and government’s
regulatory capacity on raw materials of sea reclamation. On that token, the SRSD has
no difference from “sea dumping” if there were no strict selection procedures prior to
the imposition of the policy. After toxic medical wastes had been found in proposed site
in “South Star” port, the civil groups could hardly accept the SRSD as the final solution
of solid wastes.
If trust is a “risk capital” as a form of common goods, it would need to integrate
local conditions, to verify rights of stakeholders, and to establish a mutual-benefit
system consisting of monitoring, punishment, and conflicts mitigation(Ostrom 2010).
The development of this social capital require measures enlarging dialogue
communities and sufficient circulation of information in order to build common values
widely recognized, upon which risks-related decisions could be made by lay
citizens(Koenig 2012).
Conclusion
In current Taiwan’s EIA/SEA process, the procedural mechanism of public
participation was generally deficient, and this democratic deficit also enhanced
scientific review. The citizen’s consensus meeting held during the SEA on SRSD policy,
as a single unpreceded event triggered by great political opportunities, affirmed the
necessity of this deliberative measure in building trust and promoting diverse
knowledge in both risk analysis and communication. The higher level of participation
situating the process under public monitoring and common responsibility did not only
enhance quality of policy contexts, but also allowed the government to acknowledge
possible risks of SRSD and to replace it with a more comprehensive alternative.
The worth-noticing part of this experiment was the fact that the meetings were
held by independent and well-experience academic teams, and therefore could build
more trust and more density of knowledge in the discussion. The conclusions drawn by
meeting participants, though might not be tightly related to scientific propositions, set
a practical code for policy formulation and risk management of the government based
on social common senses. The conclusions further became a guiding principle for
experts and techno-bureaucrats in sculpting directions for risk reviews and allowed
more room for more “undone science” associated with lay citizens to emerge.
Although citizens may not be skilled in analyzing science in quantitative manners,
their social relations and experience equipped them with strong potentials of delivering
responsible and pertinent opinions when decent diverse discussions were available. The
guiding principle of risk management presented in the meeting subtilized risk analysis
by facilitating more alternatives and public monitoring and provided social legitimacy
leading the scientific risks into social operation.
Another finding of this article suggests that the citizen’s doubts on policies were
rather questioning the capacity of the government in controlling the risks than the
scientific risks themselves. Owing to previous insufficiency of knowledge and locus
from lay citizens in the EIA process, the interpretation of science and risks were solely
laid upon experts. However, the discussion on scientific facts, alternatives, and
monitoring within scientific experts groups were inadequate, for there were huge gaps
between policy formulation and implementation, which in turn broke the ties of trust
and undermined the quality of risk analysis.
The most substantial findings from this deliberative experiment may be the fact
that citizens, once being offered sufficient information and vocal opportunities, could
make risk analysis more robust and prudent. Therefore, the effects of “public
participation” were by no means limited to replenishing democratic deficit, but would
rather also “spilling” to better professional expertise in scientific dimension during the
EIA review. Through the strengthening of both democracy and profession could the
society build a “trust capital” required while encountering risks.
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