Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中山大學 === 公共事務管理研究所 === 91 === Abstract
As an island state, Taiwan has developed a delicately close relationship with the resources in the ocean around her. The Pescadores, or commonly known as Penghu, is an archipelago located in the middle of the Taiwan Strait to the southwest of the Taiwan Proper. The waters here are crystal clear with every element there should be to form the best fishing grounds. For example, there are endless intertidal zones rich in crustaceans and sea snails and clams for baby fish of all kinds to feed on, and the coral forests in deeper waters offer perfect shelters for schools and schools of adult fish. However, in recent years, due to over-fishing, the oceanic environment has been rapidly and severely damaged, resources decayed. To retain diversity and vitality for oceanic resources and to make fishing here a permanently maintainable business, establishing oceanic nature preserves is a necessary, urgent thing to do. Nevertheless, restrictions and limitations that would come along with the establishment of nature preserves could very probably cause conflicts in between the fishermen, local public, experts in this field, as well as the local government.
The Goal of this research is to derive effective and efficient principles of conflict management. By applying the conflict management mechanism the author offers to the rules of oceanic nature preserves, we should hope that the preserves in Penghu will set an example for the others to come in Taiwan.
This research is basically a qualitative study. The“structured interview method” is employed to standardize questions for interviewees to answer or choose to answer. By providing interviewees with the framework of whole idea and asking them to answer similar questions, we can explore deeper into the core of the research. The interviewees include executives of Penghu County Chinwan Marine Protected Area, other officials concerned, experts that care much about Penghu’s oceanic environment, nature protection group members, representatives of the two nearby villages, and the villagers. Besides that, this research also covers some depth study as to the uniqueness and variety of the coral communities in this region.
This research has revealed that all people interviewed consider the establishment of the preserve site very important and essential to the preservation of both fishery resources and biological diversity. Out of the seventeen interviewees, thirteen (that is, nearly 80% of the people involved) do not think that the preserve site will do any harm to their interests, while the others do. The biggest conflicts are that the local people in the fishing business are worried about their careers being threatened, that local people have not felt well respected and participated in this public matter, and that there is quite some misunderstanding as to the policy regarding the preserve site. However, the villagers do wish to work this out through such ways of communication as holding hearings, villagers’ meetings, or carrying our surveys. According to the press, this case, being a pre-conflict environmental policy issue in nature, has been experiencing quite some resistance. However, this research reveals that the negative powers are not so strong as reported; the desired balance can be reached when all factors involved have been properly taken into account. For example, by developing eco-tourism, local people can turn their fishing careers into scuba diving coaching, boat rental, or the like to retain their economical competitiveness. Besides, the government can help assemble a community development committee and a patrol squad for the villagers to spontaneously join in. This way, the government and local people can develop a partnership toward mutual profits instead of suffering from conflicts.
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