國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
emerge as the more optimal of all. Therefore, much like their environment around them, institutions with their hardware as a set of norms, rules, operating procedures, customs and principles must change and thus be designed and redesigned overtime. That way customs, norms, ideals, ideologies and so forth, serve as the basis for the legal system. The laws and legal rules created within that system amend the institutional setting in turn.
What is institutional design theory for and to whom is it addressed? In every society there are a variety of more or less rooted problem that institutional design could contribute to solve. Besides, in a democracy, any citizen has an interest in how social life is arranged and who are in a position to make a change that would instigate a rearrangement. So, ideally, every democratic citizen has an interest in institutional design.
1.3.3.4 Social capital
What is social capital? How is it different from other forms of capital? All sorts of capital are built as a result of time and effort, transactions and transformation activities: we invest to make situations slightly different than they were in the past. It produces a flow of future returns, which benefit some and may harm others. In brief, social capital is shared understandings, norms, rules and expectations. However, the theory around social capital is more complex than a single definition could explain. The way we define the institutions for example, as being the rules-in-use is one of them, but it is also the trustworthiness relationships built overtime between individuals but also between the institutions and society.
It is also important to note that social capital takes a long time to build up, but can be destroyed very rapidly. Once it’s destroyed it is also very hard to rebuild.
There has been a growing interest in social capital in recent times. One of the key reasons is the link of social capital to collective action. It is pretty hard to think about any development of any kind without thinking about how one can solve collective action problems. Collective action is any goal that must require the input of more than a single individual; whatever is jointly produced is shared. The problems of collective action require gaining some forms of social capital to solve it. However, collective action is difficult to achieve because gaining the input from a variety of people can be a very complex task. So, one has to build trust in order to make everyone successfully contribute.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
In the area of local economic development, social capital basically comes from the empirical observation that the relationship of a particular person who knows somebody else makes something happen. Particular networks, relations with certain other people over time and over distance actually play an important role in a business environment. These relationships are seen as resources that can be used in the economic arena, hence the term capital. In a social science point of view, people do not develop these relationships to make money, but they have developed these relationships for all kinds of reasons overtime. The basic principle behind social capital is that “the presence of dense networks within a society, and the accompanying norms of generalized trust and reciprocity, allow citizens to overcome collective action problems more effectively” (Hooghe, 2003, p. 1). In that sense, it fits perfectly to the issues encountered in wind power facility siting where trust is embedded in a project that requires collective action (the input of a multitude of individuals) within a given society. Social capital is then seen as an important resource available to communities.
Indeed, the need for social capital is felt in a great deal of contemporary development practices and, today, academics focus largely on the importance of creating social capital when building infrastructure. The reason behind this recent enthusiasm for this concept is that analysts gradually realized that we need new tools to get a more accurate appreciation of the multiplicity of problems that should be addressed. Engineers have a tendency to think that an infrastructure project needs a great amount of technique to be successful, but sometimes forget about the importance of building social capital to make it work in the environment where it will be located.
The purpose of this study is to focus on the institutions as the instrument to generate social capital and as a result generalized trust.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Chapter 2 The Yuanli case
2.1 Why Taiwan & why Yuanli
2.1.1 Why Taiwan
Without delving into this complex subject matter that would require further elaboration, it is still very important to stress the fact that Taiwan is a very young democracy, but also a very special type of democracy. Various essays have been written on the subject, explaining that Taiwan’s democracy has considerably progressed since its shaky foundations were first laid in the late 1980s, but also acknowledging that there is room for deepening and consolidating the democratic regime (Diamond, 2001; Wong 2003). Moreover, Taiwan’s democracy is very unique in the sense that it differs from the liberal democracy experienced in the West on some very fundamental ethics and values. As Shih Chih-Yu argues in his book,
“while the central concern of liberal democracy is to limit the necessary evil of government power, there is no such evil force assumed under Confucianism where power is composed of morals” (Shih, 2007, p. 33). Democracy in Taiwan would thus be tinted with Confucian ethics, which could explain why often elected officials are seen as “caring leader[s] whom citizens must trust. These elected ‘gentlemen officials’ do not reflect what people want; they determine what is good for the people” (Shih, 2007, p. 141). Taiwan is a democracy where a majority of leaders actually take actions in a very technocratic manner, which in turn allows the developers to care less about the local population affected by the project than they would have to in another country where they are implemented.6 So, in that sense, the government used the expert approach (Leiss, 1996). In the expert approach, risk management and project planning are seen as strictly technical tasks, which are best carried out by experts. In this theory, very little importance is given to the involvement of local people in the decision-making process. As we have seen in Yuanli, even though public participation is legally biding according to EIA regulations in Taiwan, public hearings have been limited to simple information to the public in order to raise the awareness about the necessity of wind power, but never to involve the locals in the siting process. Those are very interesting observations
6 InfraVest, the developer of the Yuanli project, is a German company that already developed wind farms in Germany, Spain and Turkey, where regulations are more strict in terms of how much involvement of the local people is required.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
for our research since they help to apprehend some of the governmental institutions’ decisions and understand the logic behind it. Taiwan’s democratic system also makes facility siting, that usually requires a strong level of public engagement and/or participation to be tolerated by the local population, very interesting to analyze. Observing facility siting in Taiwan helps to better delineate the barriers to facility siting and to comprehend the complexity of the issues at stake.
Another dimension to consider is the fact that such wind power facilities, most of the time, are and will be located in remote places where people have little idea about wind power projects and how important this kind of developments are to the country. This ignorance does not contribute to the acceptance of such projects and it is another challenge that the authorities have failed to adequately address so far. Indeed, Taiwan has been dealing with facility siting issues for a long time. It is a very small territory with a high population density where it is obviously difficult to establish any facility far from any population. Therefore, dealing with the population is inevitable and Taiwanese authorities have been confronted to local opposition many times in the past.7 But, even though such protests have happened at other locations before, Yuanli is the first case of local opposition with such violence and intensity and it is also “the first time it brings a real debate around the process and the way it should be handled in Taiwan.”8
2.1.2 Why Yuanli
Yuanli has a strong community where people are very united and usually stick together. This solidarity has been a rampart to what local people have judged to be unfair decisions. As Mrs. Lin expressed in the interview, “the sense of community is very strong in Yuanli. Besides, the local residents were more combative than most people because it is a fishermen village. Fishermen have to deal with the adversity of the environment.”9 This is one of the reasons that made the protest so fierce. For example, one of the wind turbines was supposed to sit very close to a residential area in the village, where six houses are illegally built on public property land. People living in these houses are very poor and have been
7 Similar protests against unwanted wind power facilities have happened in Sanzhi (New Taipei), Xinpu (Hsinchu), Houlong (Miaoli), Lukang (Changhua), etc.
8Interview with Prof. Fang conducted on March 11, 2015
9Interview with Mrs. Lin conducted on January 9, 2015
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
staying there illegally for more than two decades. Politically speaking, none of the officials would speak out for them and the private company can always ignore them since they don’t have any legal legitimacy. Likewise, it is hard to say if they can, legally speaking, be defined as stakeholders. However, the village as a whole has been very supportive towards those six households. When the protest was still going on, IV argued in a statement that some of the local residents’ opposition was driven by selfish motives and some of the protesters’ goal was in fact to use the protest as a tool “for raising the profile of different [local politics]
agendas.”10 On the other hand, the Yuanli Self-Help Group and the protesters in general have stressed the feeling of injustice that this wind power project has brought to the village and the fact that, more than anything else, they care about the present and next generations and the environment in which they will grow up in.
At first, the project in Yuanli was not seen as controversial, or at least it wasn’t expected to bring about such intense protest that would have strong impact at the local and national level. But, as it turns out, the experience of the Yuanli onshore project has left a pretty important trauma for the local people and the authorities that were in charge of it. As a consequence, trust in the government and in the developers is quite low nowadays among some of the local people. A statement that was underlined by InfraVest afterwards: “we regret that some of the core activists in Yuanli still go against us. It probably takes much longer time to repair the connection and build up the trust.”11 This kind of distrust has its own roots and (re)building it is not an easy task, especially in Miaoli where offshore wind farms are actually planned to be built in the future.12 Indeed, one of the chosen sites is close to Yuanli, where it is now very difficult to undertake any project that would not trigger opposition and skepticism within the local population:
“When researchers held a meeting to explain to the local population the future offshore wind power projects, at first local residents refused to sign the attendance sheet. It actually happened in the past that the developer would go to local sites where a project would be built to organize a meeting, which initially was supposed to aim at explaining the benefits and disadvantages of the project. However, a lot of times the project’s developer simply organized a quiz show and a gift give-away, and asked the local
10 Statement issued by InfraVest on June 17, 2013
11 Interview with YD Chang from InfraVest conducted on February 25, 2015
12 Three modeling projects for offshore wind power in Taiwan: 2 are in Zhanghua, 1 in Mioali.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
people to sign the attendance sheet and eventually used these signatures to declare that the local people were in favor of the project. It happened very frequently in the 1980s, 1990s, but even after 2000 we can still hear this kind of stories.”13
It is thus necessary to learn lessons from the past and to try to understand the controversy around renewable energy in order to tackle the issues at their very roots. The Yuanli case is very special in terms of how violent the conflict became at some point, but very representative of how the government has been dealing with wind power development on the island. This case crystallizes the common distant political attitude that the institutions generally adopt when dealing with local protest, while taking initiatives and being increasingly involved in the issue could probably benefit both to the local people and to the institutions in terms of mitigating the conflict and building trust between the different stakeholders. The Yuanli experience is very important to understand certain key issues, obstacles that block a productive process.
By making the facility siting process even more difficult than in the past, all of these issues that very clearly emerged during the Yuanli protest are increasing the transaction costs for a majority of stakeholders in their attempt to launch other wind power projects.
2.2 The event, the questions it raised and what we can learn from it
2.2.1 The proceedings
The developer initially planned on building 14 windmills in less than three kilometers, whereas all three townships located above Yuanli have about one windmill erected every kilometer. In the end IV was only able to construct four turbines. Among these four turbines, the developers were able to secure agreement for two of them and agreed to deconstruct the other 2. One of them has already been taken down so, in the end, there are presently three wind turbines sitting close to the village of Yuanli.
13 Interview with Prof. Fang conducted on March 11, 2015
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Figure 1 Map of the initial wind power project in Yuanli – 14 turbines were supposed to be built along the Township coastline
Why did they want to build so many turbines in such little area? According to the social activists interviewed, there are reasonable doubts that the extraordinary number of turbines in this township was due to the fact that the developer could have compensated the township mayor quite handsomely. It was said that the developers actually financially compensated the local government for each wind turbine established in the village, officially and under the table. A statement that was not opposed by Prof. Fan when the issue was raised during the interview: “Nobody would do something that extreme without getting any benefit in return. That’s just common sense.” However, the main issue resides in the way this project
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
was handled by the public authorities and the developer rather than on allegations regarding the possible corruption of local officials.
People in Yuanli have expressed various concerns ranging from a lack of proper consultation to certain legal issues. For example, local residents have claimed that, at first, the developer intentionally held the public hearing a little further than where the opposition was the most important. Because there is one single EIA for 3 different townships (Yuanli, Houlong, Zhunan), the developer could apparently choose one of the three to hold a public hearing for issues concerning turbines in another township. It was said that the developer held the first public hearing at a location where the risk for the local population was the lowest, so that they could avoid real opposition from the locals. This is why some of the residents complained that the only moment where the local people knew about the implementation of wind turbines near their village is when the construction was about to start. Those methods were consistent with the law but it is also way to take advantage of some loopholes in order to avoid facing opposition. In a nutshell, how IV manages the construction and the operation of renewable energy facilities and how the company acts with local people is always legal but not always considered appropriate by the local people.
The developer also intentionally excluded certain requirements to fit local circumstances, such as the safety distances between wind turbines and public facilities. The reason behind this method is that the regulations for an EIA are in principle. The EIA is a general process, which means that it does not state specific requirements regarding wind turbines development projects. Therefore, when it comes to the developers trying to establish a project within their EIA report, they can intentionally overlook certain facts that actually poses risk to local residents. However, the EIA committee members wouldn’t notice because they wouldn’t be so familiar with the specific requirements for wind turbines development and also unfamiliar with the local conditions.
When they felt that their village was at risk, local people turned to local politicians as well as the council representative for support. At first, they would have high expectation given that those are people they are familiar with. As the protest would grow, officials from the BoE paid a visit to find a solution to the persistent problems. Local residents’ level of trust was still high and they had faith that the public authorities would come up with a decent settlement agreement. However, BoE officials never really responded to locals’ requests nor
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
questions. Eventually, even congressmen Lin Shu-Fen14 visited the village and reacted by asking the BoE to take actions, which eventually asked the developer to hold a public hearing in accordance with the administrative procedure law. However, the BoE was not expressively showing its involvement in the public hearing, which gave the impression to the protesters that they were still not taken seriously and that none of the public institutions were really willing to help them.
This was not only affecting the local residents’ life but also represented a heavy burden for the developer. The construction was delayed by the protest, it caused financial stress and they had difficulties securing additional finances for later stages.
2.2.2 The questions the protest raised
According to most experts and academics interviewed, one important reason for the lack of participation was that planners and politicians considered that people did not know much about wind power in the remote places were most of the wind turbines are sited, therefore their participation and feedback was most of the time considered irrelevant to the complicated and very technical process. This less thorough and technocratic process meant that neighboring residents could not influence issues such as the location, size of turbines and
According to most experts and academics interviewed, one important reason for the lack of participation was that planners and politicians considered that people did not know much about wind power in the remote places were most of the wind turbines are sited, therefore their participation and feedback was most of the time considered irrelevant to the complicated and very technical process. This less thorough and technocratic process meant that neighboring residents could not influence issues such as the location, size of turbines and