Institutions and Strategies for Managing NIMBY Environmental Disputes: The Cases of Sixth Naphtha Cracker Plant and Bayer Project
Author: Ching-Ping Tang
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
Taiwan’s economic development has been plagued by the NIMBY (Not In MY Back Yard) protests. Under democratization, the government can no longer rely purely on its authority to preclude grass-roots protests against the preemption of locally unwanted land uses. Neither has the government built up systematical channels for sufficient public discourses on siting decisions, as a democratic system normally allows, nor has it created credible mechanisms to solve disputes. Mainly through rational choice and transaction cost theory, this paper examines the institutional deficits of Taiwan in dealing with NIMY environmental conflicts. It analyzes the situational and strategic factors that had interacted with existing institutions in three cases–the Sixth Naphtha Cracker Plants in Li-che (I-lan) and Mai-liao (Yun-lin) respectively, and Bayer in Tai-chung Harbor area. It argues that promoting political discourses in earlier stage of citing decisions is just the way to control undue politicizing activities by local elite soliciting private selective interests. This paper concludes by discussing some policy implications of important findings.