Taiwan's Environmental Struggle

5Reflections

Toward a green silicon island

Taiwan celebrated the 20th anniversary of its ‘rebirth’, so to speak, in 2007, marking the date when martial law was lifted and the democratization and flowering of human rights began to take place. The year of 1987 was also momentous on the environmental front, as we have seen, with the formal establishment of the central government’s Environmental Protection Administration, followed by a complex hierarchy of agencies and organizations at all levels, whose collective goal has been to work toward a cleaner and better environment, a higher quality of life, for the people of Taiwan. While some of the foundations for this campaign had been laid before 1987, that year truly was a watershed on the environmental ...