| Summary: | 碩士 === 中原大學 === 財經法律研究所 === 107 === Taiwan had deployed a policy of economic development and achieved excellent results. However, the strong economic development neglects environmental protection against pollution and other negative impacts. In order to balance economic development and environmental protection, the legislators introduced the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (EIA Act) from the United States to Taiwan on December 30, 1994.
Unfortunately, the EIA Act has not solved the problems between economic and environment but created a lot of disputes. First, the whole process asymmetrically relies on the review of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) but immunes the Central Competent Authorities for Business Objectives from EIA. Therefore, the EPA takes undue burdens while competent authorities can relief their responsibility. Second, developers usually abuse the EIA process. The same controversy does not happen in the United States since the EIA possess no veto power there. Instead, during the whole policy-making process, federal agencies must assess the environmental impacts. Different from Taiwan, all federal agencies have political responsibility for the policy, not only EPA.
In the cases of Jen-Nan and Guan-Tang, there are two main reasons why the EIA is not implemented successfully in Taiwan. One is the uncertainty of the Environmental Assessment (EA), and the other is the lack of public participation. There was even a situation in which employees of developers substituted residents in public hearings. All these problems contribute to the failure of the EIA system.
This article argues that Taiwan should amend the EIA Act by referring to the EIA system in the United States. Returning the review power to the National Competent Authorities for Business Objectives incrementally to alleviate the government’s intervention and various disputes.
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