Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Taiwan’s Land Use after World War II: An Ecological Modernization Approach

  • Chapter
Book cover Environment, Modernization and Development in East Asia

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History ((PSWEH))

  • 612 Accesses

Abstract

Post-war Taiwan’s environment paid dearly for its so-called economic ‘miracle’. Various environmental problems resulted from Taiwan’s specific political economy, namely, that of a ‘developmental state’, favouring economic growth and development. Such a political-economic structure has affected, if not determined, environmental policy in Taiwan. This research adopts the theory of ecological modernization (EM) to investigate and understand the historical course of shifts in land use and industrial policy in relation to the imperatives of Taiwan’s developmental state.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. Donald Hughes, What is Environmental History? (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2006), 1.

    Google Scholar 

  2. J. R. McNeill, Something New under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001), xxii.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Donald Hughes, An Environmental History of the World: Humankind’s Changing Role in the Community of Life (New York: Routledge, 2001), 1–11.

    Google Scholar 

  4. John Agnew, Place and Politics: The Geographical Mediation of State and Society (Boston, MA: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 28.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Liu Hwa-Jen 劉華真, ‘Vanishing Farmers: Taiwan’s Early Environmental Protests Revisited’, Taiwanese Sociology 21 (2011): 1–49, especially 38.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Lester R. Brown, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008);

    Google Scholar 

  7. Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World (New York: Zed Books, 2007);

    Google Scholar 

  8. Clive Ponting, A Green History of the World: Nature, Pollution, and the Collapse of Societies (New York: Penguin Books, 1993).

    Google Scholar 

  9. Arthur P. J. Mol, Gert Spaargaren, and David A. Sonnenfeld, ‘Ecological Modernisation: Three Decades of Policy, Practice and Theoretical Reflection’, in The Ecological Modernisation Reader, ed. Arthur P. J. Mol, David A. Sonnenfeld, and Gert Spaargaren (New York: Routledge, 2009), 3.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Mol et al. eds., Ecological Modernisation Reader, 359–497; Arthur P. J. Mol and David Sonnenfeld, eds., Ecological Modernisation around the World (New York: Frank Cass, 2000), 171–292;

    Google Scholar 

  11. Yang Li-Fang, ‘Embedded Autonomy and Ecological Modernisation in Taiwan’, International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development 4, no. 3 (2005): 310–30;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Tsai Tsai-Hsiu 蔡采秀, ‘Nature, Urban Planning and Environment Consciousness: On the Problems of Ecological Modernization in Taiwan’, Thought and Words 42, no. 2 (2004): 117–81;

    Google Scholar 

  13. Tseng Hua-Pi 曾華璧, ‘Environmental Governance in Taiwan (1950–2000): An Analytical Study in the Light of Ecological Modernization and Eco State Theory’, Taiwan Historical Research 15, no. 4 (2008): 121–48.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Arthur P. J. Mol and Gert Spaargaren, ‘Ecological Modernisation and Industrial Transformation’, in A Companion to Environmental Geography, ed. N. Castree, D. Demeritt, D. Liverman and B. Rhoads (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 259.

    Google Scholar 

  15. György Pataki, ‘Ecological Modernization as a Paradigm of Corporate Sustainability’, Sustainable Development 17, no. 2 (2009): 83;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Stephen C. Young, ‘Introduction: The Origins and Evolving Nature of Ecological Modernization’, in The Emergence of Ecological Modernisation: Integrating the Environment and the Economy? ed. Stephen C. Young (New York: Routledge, 2000), 1–40.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Maarten A. Hajer, ‘Ecological Modernization as Cultural Politics’, in Risk, Environment, and Modernity: Towards a New Ecology, ed. S. Lash, Bronisiaw Szerszynski, and Brian Wynne (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1996), 251.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Frederick Buttel, ‘Ecological Modernization as Social Theory’, Geoforum 31, no. 1 (2000): 60.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Joseph Murphy, ‘Ecological Modernization’, Geoforum 31, no. 1 (2000): 2.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Gert Spaargaren and Arthur P. J. Mol, ‘Sociology, Environment and Modernity: Ecological Modernization as a Theory of Social Theory’, Society and Natural Resources 5, no. 4 (1992): 329.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Arthur P. J. Mol, Globalization and Environmental Reform (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 58.

    Google Scholar 

  22. John Barry, ‘Ecological Modernization’, in Debating the Earth: The Environmental Politics Reader, ed. John Dryzek and David Schlosberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 306.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Arthur P. J. Mol, Environmental Reform in the Information Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 72.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  24. Wolfgang Sachs, Planet Dialectics (New York: Zed Books, 1999), 127.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Eco-efficiency primarily means ‘doing more with less’. Reduction is its central tenet, for example, by cutting the amount of toxic waste created, the quantity of raw materials used, or the product size itself. It is mostly measured by ‘the rate of environmental damage caused per unit of output’. See Andrew Gouldson and Joseph Murphy, ‘Ecological Modernisation: Economic Restructuring and the Environment’, The Political Quarterly 68 B (1997): 74. The consumption of basic resources is used as proxy variables for environmental impact. See Murphy, ‘Ecological Modernization’, 2.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Steven Yearley, ‘The Social Construction of Environmental Problems: A Theoretical Review and Some Not-Very-Herculean Labors’, in Sociological Theory and the Environment: Classical Foundations, Contemporary Insights, ed. Riley E. Dunlap, Frederick H. Buttel, Peter Dickens, and August Gijswijt (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 281.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Richard York and Eugene A Rosa, ‘Key Challenges to Ecological Modernization Theory’, Organization & Environment, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Sep 2003), 273–88.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. John S. Dryzek, ‘Ecological Modernization, Risk Society, and the Green State’, in Ecological Modernisation Reader, ed. Mol et al., 226–53; Christian Hunold and John S. Dryzek, ‘Green Political Strategy and the State: Combining Political Theory and Comparative History’, in The State and the Global Ecological Crisis, ed. John Barry and Robyn Eckersley (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 75–95.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Arthur P. J. Mol, ‘From Environmental Sociologies to Environmental Sociology? A Comparison of U.S. and European Environmental Sociology’, Organization & Environment 19, no. 1 (2006): 5–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Maurie J. Cohen, ‘Risk Society and Ecological Modernisation’, Futures 29, no. 2 (1997): 105–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Richard York and Eugene A. Rosa, ‘Key Challenges to Ecological Modernization Theory: Institutional Efficacy, Case Study Evidence, Units of Analysis, and the Pace of Eco-Efficiency’, Organization & Environment September 16, no. 3 (2003): 273–88.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Arthur P. J. Mol, ‘The Environmental Movement in an Era of Ecological Modernization’, Geoforum 31, no. 1 (2000): 45–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Renato J. Orsato and Stewart R. Clegg, ‘Radical Reformism: Towards Critical Ecological Modernization’, Sustainable Development 13, no. 4 (2005): 253–67.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Bill Tomlinson, Greening through IT: Information Technology for Environmental Sustainability (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010).

    Google Scholar 

  35. Maarten A. Hajer, The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization and the Policy Process (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 26.

    Google Scholar 

  36. Thomas Gold, State and Society in the Taiwan Miracle (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1986);

    Google Scholar 

  37. Robert Wade, Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).

    Google Scholar 

  38. Lee Chen-Jai 李承嘉, An Analysis of Land Policy in Postwar Taiwan (Taipei: Jenq-Yang, 1998);

    Google Scholar 

  39. Hsia Chu-Joe 夏鑄九 and Zhang Jin-Sen 張景森, ‘A Review of National Land Planning in Taiwan’, in Challenges to National Land Planning, ed. Chyuan-Jenq Shiau (Taipei: Yeh-Chiang, 1993), 11–30.

    Google Scholar 

  40. CEPD 經建會, Economic Development, R.O.C. (Taiwan) (Taipei: Council for Economic Planning and Development, 2012), 42.

    Google Scholar 

  41. Hsu Song-Ken 許松根 and Chuang Chao-Jung 莊朝榮, ‘A Review of Current Issues and Strategy of Industrial Land’, Taiwan Economic Forecast and Policy 23, no. 1 (1992): 155–82.

    Google Scholar 

  42. Liu, ‘Vanishing Farmers’, 16–17; Jheng Cin-Sian 鄭親憲, ‘The Retrospection and Prospection of Taiwan’s Industrial District Policy’, Journal of the Land Bank of Taiwan 28, no. 4 (1991): 95–115.

    Google Scholar 

  43. CEPD, Taiwan Statistical Data Book (Taipei: Council for Economic Planning and Development, 2010), 36.

    Google Scholar 

  44. G. S. Shieh 謝國雄, ‘Invisible Factory: Subcontracting Points and Homeworkers in Taiwan’, Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies 13 (1992): 137–60.

    Google Scholar 

  45. Liao Cheng-Hung 廖正宏, Chun-chieh Huang 黃俊傑, and Hsin-huang Hsiao 蕭新煌, Changes in Taiwan’s Agricultural Policy after World War Two (Taipei: The Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, 1986), 55–6.

    Google Scholar 

  46. Zhang Jin-Sen 張景森, Urban Planning in Taiwan: 1895–1988 (Taipei: Yeh-Chian, 1993), 72.

    Google Scholar 

  47. Generally speaking, there are four crises: diplomatic setback, social challenges, oil shocks, international economic competition. See Hsin-Hsun Huang, ‘An Investigation of Taiwan’s Persistent Environmental Plight: A Political and Ecological Critique of Science-Based Industrial Parks in Taiwan’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 2012), 169–74.

    Google Scholar 

  48. Chu Yun-han, ‘The East Asian NICs: A State-led Path to the Developed World’, in Global Change, Regional Response: The New International Context of Development, ed. Barbara Stallings (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 208.

    Google Scholar 

  49. Chu Wan-Wen 瞿宛文, The Mechanism of Economic Growth (Taipei: Tonsan, 2002).

    Google Scholar 

  50. The Ten Major Construction Projects period was from 1974 to 1979 and its total expenditure was more than US$50 million. It included the electrification of the railways, the construction of the first Freeway, Taoyuan International Airport, the north line of the Taiwan Railway, Taichung Harbour, Suao Harbour, and the first nuclear power plant, as well as the establishment of the China Shipbuilding Corporation shipyard, the China Steel plant and the CPC Kaohsiung petroleum refinery. See Yu Tzong-Shian 于宗先 and Wang Chin-Lih 王金利, A Visible Hand: The Government’s Role in the Process of Economic Development (Taipei: Linking, 2003), 83.

    Google Scholar 

  51. Sasamoto Takeji 笹本武治, ‘The Process of Industrialization’, in Industrialization in Taiwan, ed. Taniura Takao (Taipei: Renjian, 2003), 27.

    Google Scholar 

  52. Lin Yu-Shan 林育萱, ‘The Study of the Influences of Linyuan Industrial Park on Industrial and Environmental Changes of Linyuan Township’ (Master’s diss., National Kaohsiung Normal University, 2011), 16.

    Google Scholar 

  53. Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao 蕭新煌, Local Environmental Protest Movements in Taiwan: 1980–1996 (Hong Kong: Center for Cross-strait Relations, 1999), 11;

    Google Scholar 

  54. Ho Ming-Sho 何明修, Green Democracy (Taipei: Socio Publishing, 2006), 367.

    Google Scholar 

  55. Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, ‘New Environmental Paradigm and Social Change: An Analysis of Environmental Values in Taiwan’, National Taiwan University Journal of Sociology 18 (1986): 81–133.

    Google Scholar 

  56. Yeh Jiunn-Rong 葉俊榮, Environmental Policy and Law (Taipei: Angle, 2010), 116.

    Google Scholar 

  57. Tseng Hua-Pi 曾華璧, Human and Environment (Taipei: Cheng-Chung, 2001), 121;

    Google Scholar 

  58. Chen Mei-Chuan 陳美娟, ‘The Development of Nature Conservation Policy in Taiwan: A Case Study of the Wild Society of Taipei’ (Master’s diss., National Taiwan University, 2007), 41.

    Google Scholar 

  59. Wang Shin 王鑫, Community Participation and the Management of Wildlife Conservation Area (Taipei: Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan, 1998), 7, 31.

    Google Scholar 

  60. Chu Wan-Wen, ‘Water Resource and Petrochemical Industry’, in Environmental Protection and Industrial Policy, ed. Taiwan Research Fund (Taipei: Taiwan Research Fund. 1994), 39–53.

    Google Scholar 

  61. Hi-tech industry was favoured because it was value-added, technology-intensive, and both low in pollution and energy intensity, as well as because it produced an industrial-linkage effect. Hsu Hsien-Hsiu 徐賢修, ‘Retrospect to the Establishment of Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park’, Biographical Literature 66, no. 6 (1995): 23–8; Yu and Wang, A Visible Hand, 96.

    Google Scholar 

  62. For example, Chiang Ching-kuo, at the opening ceremony of the Hsinchu SIP, said that hi-tech industry relies ‘more on hi-tech manpower and less on natural resources’, such as land and energy, and therefore ‘it would be less polluting’. See President[’s] Office Gazette (19 December 1980), 1–2. According to Article 3 of the Act for Establishment and Administration of Science Parks (1979), ‘science-based industry’ refers to an enterprise involved in ‘manufacturing, research and development of high-tech industrial products’, which should ‘conform with domestic industrial development requirements and preferably employ or cultivate local high-tech professionals … [and] not create any public hazards’ (italics added). Huang Chao-Mou 黃昭謀, ‘The Informational Society Construction of Taiwan’s Technocracy: Referring to Technology Policy’ (Ph.D. diss., Shih Hsin University, 2005).

    Google Scholar 

  63. CEPD, A Brief Introduction to the Plan for National Land Comprehensive Development (Taipei: Council for Economic Planning and Development, 1996), 6;

    Google Scholar 

  64. NSC 國科會, White Paper in Science and Technology 1997 (Taipei: National Science Council, 1997), 12.

    Google Scholar 

  65. STSIPA 南科管理局, Special Issue for Southern Taiwan Science-based Industrial Park Administration (Tainan: STSIPA, 2009), 16. Yang Yeou-Ren 楊友仁, ‘From Hsinchu to Tainan: The Political Economy of Science Park, New Industry and Local Development’ (Master’s diss., National Taiwan University, 1998), 6–1 to 6–21.

    Google Scholar 

  66. Liao Kun-Jung 廖坤榮 and Chen Ya-Feng 陳雅芬, ‘Local Developmental Policy from the Perspective of Post-materialism: The Pin-Nan Case of Tainan County’, The Chinese Public Administration Review 12, no. 4 (2003): 43–76;

    Google Scholar 

  67. Tseng Hua-Pi, ‘Ecological Thought and Politics: A Preliminary Study on Tainan’s Conservation Movement in 1990s’, Thought and Words 44, no. 2 (2006): 89–131.

    Google Scholar 

  68. ‘Green’ denotes sustainable development, a reflection on industrialization. It is a pro-environment developmental strategy that balances economic, social, and ecological interests. ‘Silicon Island’ refers to the essences of Silicon Valley, such as innovation and entrepreneurship, as leading powers in Taiwan’s economy. See CEDP, Construction Blueprint of Green Silicon Island and its related Policy Program (Taipei: Council for Economic Planning and Development, 2001), 1.

    Google Scholar 

  69. Chen Shui-bian 陳水扁, New Century, New Course: Chen Shui-bian’s National Blueprint (Taipei: Chen Shui-bian Presidential Campaign Operation Center), 4 (2000): 3.

    Google Scholar 

  70. CEDP, Construction Blueprint of Green Silicon Island and its related Policy Program, 18; OECD, Knowledge-based Industries in Asia (Paris: OECD, 2000), 16.

    Google Scholar 

  71. Tseng Hua-Pi, ‘Ecological Thought and Politics’, 89–131; Tang Ching-Ping 湯京平 and Lu Chi-Jung 呂季蓉, ‘Global Ecological Conservation Movements and Local Factions: A Politico-economic Analysis of Aogu Development Projects’, Chinese Political Science Review 42 (2006): 1–35.

    Google Scholar 

  72. Yang Yung-Nane 楊永年 et al., ‘A Review of Tainan City’s Governance: A Case of Developing Taijiang National Park’, Chinese Local Autonomy 66, no. 7 (2013): 5–28.

    Google Scholar 

  73. Chung Ming-Kuang 鍾明光 et al., ‘An Endeavor to Integrate the Protected Area into Rural Development: A Case Study of Conservation Development for Community Movement in Mei-Nung since 1990s’, Journal of City and Planning 40, no. 3 (2013): 217–41.

    Google Scholar 

  74. Taiwan BOE 能源局, Energy Statistics Handbook 2013 (Taipei: Bureau of Energy, MOEA, 2013), 35.

    Google Scholar 

  75. SGPRF 土壤及地下水污染整治基金管理委員會, 2009 Soil and Groundwater Pollution Remediation Annual Report (Taipei: EPA, 2010), 102.

    Google Scholar 

  76. HSIPA, Hsinchu Science Park Annual Report 2012 (Hsinchu: Science Park Administration, 2013), 7;

    Google Scholar 

  77. CTSIPA, Central Taiwan Science Park Annual Report 2012 (Taichung: Central Taiwan Science Park Administration, 2013), 9; STSIPA, Southern Taiwan Science Park Annual Report 2012, 5.

    Google Scholar 

  78. The industrial sector contributed 45.2 per cent of total GHG emissions and 43.7 per cent of domestic energy consumption in 1993, and the figures had respectively grown to 48.5 per cent and 53.4 per cent by 2011. Taiwan BOE, Energy Statistics Handbook 2013, 130; Taiwan EPA, The History of Greenhouse Gases Reduction Management (Taipei: Environmental Protection Administration, 2012), 215.

    Google Scholar 

  79. Hajer, The Politics of Environmental Discourse, 260–94; Peter Christoff, ‘Ecological modernisation, ecological modernities’, Environmental Politics, Vol. 5, Issue 3 (1996): 476–500.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  80. Christoff, ‘Ecological modernisation, ecological modernities’, 490; John S. Dryzek, David Downes, Christian Hunold, David Schlosberg and Hans-Kristian Hernes, ‘Ecological Modernization, Risk Society, and the Green State’, in Green State and Social Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 230; Hajer, The Politics of Environmental Discourse, 281.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  81. Dunlap Riley and Brent Marshall, ‘Environmental Sociology’, in 21st Century Sociology: A Reference Handbook, ed. Clifton Bryant and Dennis Peck, vol. 2 (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2007), 329–40.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Hsin-Hsun Huang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Shih-Jung Hsu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

    Ts’ui-jung Liu (Adjunct Research Fellow) (Adjunct Research Fellow)

  2. Historical Research Unit, University of Waikato, New Zealand

    James Beattie (Director) (Director)

Copyright information

© 2016 Hsin-Hsun Huang, Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, and Shih-Jung Hsu

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Huang, HH., Hsiao, HH.M., Hsu, SJ. (2016). Taiwan’s Land Use after World War II: An Ecological Modernization Approach. In: Liu, Tj., Beattie, J. (eds) Environment, Modernization and Development in East Asia. Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-57231-8_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-57231-8_10

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-84803-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-57231-8

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation