Public Participation and Environmental Impact Assessment in Mainland China and Taiwan: Political Foundations of Environmental Management
通过比较中国大陆和台湾的环境影响评估运作，分析公众参与在环境管理中的作用，揭示政治制度如何影响EIA的有效性。
What role can public participation play in environmental management? Among major tools for environmental management, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been widely practised in many countries. Its effectiveness, however, varies depending on the extent to which transparency and public participation are incorporated in its process. In this article, we analyse the role of public participation in environmental management by examining the operation of EIAs in two polities, Mainland China and Taiwan. In both cases, a lack of transparency and public participation had severely limited the effectiveness of EIA during the initial years when it was first introduced. Both polities have attempted to address the respective limitations of their EIA systems, and both have made some progress while encountering problems inherent in their underlying political institutions. The two cases illustrate the dynamic connections between political institutions and environmental management in developing countries.