Governance of Biodiversity Conservation in China And Taiwan

supra-national institutions emerge and begin to undermine the traditional role
of the nation-state in environmental policy making.^3
These conceptualizations of environmental movements and change are
based on a global perspective and may not well represent developments in late
modernizing societies, and particularly those outside the West. This chapter
examines the burgeoning literature on ENGOs as it applies to the specific
context of growth and change in Taiwan and China. Much of the information
is descriptive, based on our investigations into the evolution of environ-
mentalism in both Chinese contexts. The analytical questions we ask are:

1. To what extent have ENGOs been able to influence environmental
   outcomes, and in particular the identification and mitigation of threats to
   species and ecosystems?; and 2) How have ENGOs influenced the growth and
   dynamics of civil society? Although sections of this chapter do discuss the
   linkage between ENGOs and democratization, this is not emphasized due to a
   series of conceptual and practical comparative difficulties.
   The chapter begins with an historical and then topical treatment of
   environmentalism in Taiwan, focusing on changes to the strategies and objec-
   tives of ENGOs as the Taiwanese state underwent democratic consolidation
   after the 2000 presidential elections. Then we consider the rise of
   environmental groups in China, which in the early twenty-first century remain
   under Leninist party-state control. We present a typology of China’s ENGOs
   and provide examples of each type from the area of biodiversity conservation.
   We conclude with a comparison of Taiwan and China, surveying the

160 Governance of biodiversity conservation in China and Taiwan

Table 7.1 Characteristics of the Three Waves of Environmentalism

First wave Second wave Third wave

Beginning ca. 1900 ca. 1970 Late 1980s
Central notion Nature Limits to growth Global change
conservation
Focal point Protection of Minimizing Sustainable
reserves and additions and development
species withdrawals
Geographical Industrializing Industrialized Globalizing
range results nation-states nation-states world
Major social – Deindustrialization, Ecological
theories on neo-Marxism modernization
environment

Source: Arthur Mol (2003), The Ecological Modernization of the Global Economy, Cambridge:
MIT Press, p. 49.