New Publication: Environmental governance in Taiwan and Hong Kong: multiple levels of interaction

Environmental governance in Taiwan and Hong Kong: multiple levels of interaction


by Dr. Simona Grano, PhD (Project Leader)
Prof. Dr. Andrea Riemenschnitter


In my Post-Doc project I aim at analyzing environmental governance mechanisms and actors in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Specifically, I aim at studying the current power dynamics governing environmental policies’ application after the pluralization of the agents involved in such processes, following the political liberalization reforms that took place in the ‘80s both in Taiwan and Hong Kong. If the major “watershed” event in the Taiwanese case was the lifting of martial law in 1987, in Hong Kong colonial rule brought the island on to a slightly different path in terms of environmental governance and the actors involved in it. Here too, from the mid-1980s, the colonial political system underwent a process of liberalization and democratization (Chiu, Hung and Lai, 1999: 77) albeit for different reasons.


The interplay of various stakeholders, social organizations and agencies at the local and national level, the way they respond to each other and to transnational developments, are important aspects that will be analyzed throughout this study. The research thus calls for an investigation into multi-scalar relations of governance engaging local officials and other actors, regarding central authorities’ environmental policies; the way local communities and civil society organizations respond to these experiments or try to influence them in a way that becomes profitable to them are in the focus of the present study.


For more info: http://www.research-projects.uzh.ch/p13391.htm