Politics of climate change mitigation in Taiwan: International isolation, developmentalism legacy, and civil society responses

Abstract

This focus review summarizes climate politics in Taiwan at the global, the national, and the local level. The article begins with an introduction to Taiwan's emission profile, major actors, and recent policy development. At the global level, Taiwan's unique international status has limited its responses to climate change as mostly gesture policies, but recently corporate climate actions bloomed due to pressures from the supply chains. At the national level, Taiwan's developmental state legacy has locked the country in a “high‐carbon regime” and struggled with the debate on nuclear power. Finally, at the local level, Taiwan seeks to facilitate climate actions with the principle of energy democracy, yet public participation still falls short and local land use conflicts will present enormous challenges. The article ends with a discussion on current knowledge gaps and invites future research to put Taiwan into comparative perspectives. This article is categorized under: Policy and Governance > National Climate Change Policy

Rationalizing Taiwan’s climate action based on oceans: ineffective governance, aspiring international participation, unrealized universal values, and a new window of blue carbon ecosystem measure

“…The developmentalism mindset has prioritized economic development over social justice concerns, for example, environmental protection and labor rights. In a developmental state shaped by this developmentalism mindset, such as Taiwan, the state wields a "brown economic package", whereby low energy price is purposively maintained with government-sponsored economic planning and miscellaneous fossil fuel subsidies (Liu and Chao, 2023). By privileging the carbon-intensive petrochemical industry, the main goal is to spur industrial development, at the cost of laggard climate actions with constrained mobility to a low-carbon economy transition, and a hindered prospect of the electronics industry (Chou et al, 2019).…”

“…That said, the successful implementation of the BCE measures has hinged upon the substantial transformation of the relations between the developmentalist drive for growth and the rising environmentalist demand, which needs to be not only mutually exclusive but also interacting, inclusive, and integrative. This can be reified in a shift from a view holding the essence of climate action as the fulfillment of responsibility to one having green growth opportunities situated at the core while supplemented by the enhancement of Taiwan's industrial competitiveness (Hu et al, 2016;Hu et al, 2017;Feng et al, 2022;Liu and Chao, 2023), which can help the integration between the appropriateness concern (the socially constructed role and matching obligations) and calculation of consequence (actions made upon rational choice along with welldefined interests), whereby forming the appropriateness-consequence compound logic. The development of the BCE measures, therefore, serves not only to fulfill Taiwan's responsibility in fighting climate change but also to reap the benefit of a sustainable environment and an economist interest in the growth of relevant industries.…”