- Politics and biodiversity
conservation
This volume is a study of the governance of biodiversity conservation,
meaning that it extends beyond the operations of political institutions to
include non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as grassroots groups,
national environmental NGOs (or ENGOs), and international environmental
NGOs, as well as scientists who have specialized expertise and strong interests
in the development and implementation of policy. As we compare mainland
China with Taiwan, the concept of governance is most appropriate, as it
equalizes the reference frame in the two quite different jurisdictions. Both
have distinct, albeit different, governance processes.
In this chapter we broaden our inquiry to consider the ‘politics’ of
biodiversity conservation. Politics refers to all those actors and processes
which influence the allocation of scarce values in a polity, and in democratic
nations the sphere of action is far more vast, inclusive, and transparent than in
authoritarian systems. Democratic states grant decisional influence not only
to NGOs and specialized groups with expertise, but also to public opinion of
the mass public, demonstrations and protests, political party competition,
electoral campaigns, and even to individual and group contacting of decision-
makers.
In this chapter, we turn to the politics of biodiversity conservation, by first
examining the shared political milieu – bureaucratic politics – from which
modern China and Taiwan emerged. Then we briefly reiterate the evolution of
Taiwan’s democratization movement and its linkage to environmental policy
formation and implementation. The core of the chapter presents two contrast-
ing case studies. The first narrates the organization and mobilization of
democratic protest against plans to develop a petrochemical complex and steel
plant adjacent to one of Taiwan’s last protected areas, the Qigu wetlands. The
richly complex activities transpire over more than a decade and involve a host
of actors, interests, and institutions. The contrasting case concerns attempts,
successful up to late 2005, to halt dam construction on the Nu River in the
northwest Yunnan Province, one of the few remaining unspoiled biodiversity
hotspots in China. The chapter concludes with a comparison and contrast of
the cases, for what they reveal about the efficacy of politics in the preservation
of rare and endangered species and ecosystems.
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