Stakeholder incentives and challenges

In Taiwan, coastal management is characterized by a lack of integration, coordination, and enforcement amongst national, regional, and local levels. This section summarizes the various stakeholders and their incentives vis-à-vis the coast and, by extension, coral reefs.

At the national level, the CPA is currently the lead agency in coastal zone management. However, ocean management and resource conservation are not its primary focus – the department also includes divisions such as National Parks, Public Works, Road Engineering, and so on. There were plans to establish a specialized agency that would be responsible for ocean activities, but the proposed Ministry of Marine Affairs was followed by the setup of the Ocean Affairs Council instead. Nevertheless, the CPA incorporated integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) into the Coastal Zone Management Act, which came into force February 2017. Fortunately, the CPA passed the ICZM through the Executive Yuan, making the act less susceptible to the reshuffling of cabinet members and whims of party leaders.

Yet, national institutions have been criticized for being ineffective due to improper enforcement of laws and regulations at the expense of the environment. This may be a relic of authoritarian times when pro-environmental measures were not given serious thought and economic incentives were prioritized; conversely, it may be the

regional and local actors who are not fulfilling their responsibility. It may also be a trait that is prevalent in institutions, i.e. lack of adaptive management, slow response rate, or an imposing red tape that cannot catch up to the needs and dynamics of ecosystem resources.

An unwillingness to work with national institutions is visible in the case of the Tao. In the past, the CPA sought to transform Orchid Island into a national park for environmental purposes. This was met with local resistance, who believed it was a guise to force them to resettle or surrender their right to the land. Issues such as the 4 NPP controversy and the recent land rights disputes form the backbone of the Tao distrust in the government and the existing institutions, hindering collective action vis-à-vis the environment. What is more, communication gaps and misunderstandings due to language or simply ‘culture clash’ have hindered national-local collaboration till this day.

Indeed, ineffective communication is also seen between coastal scientists and end users. Despite substantial academic discourse on the benefits of sustaining coral reefs and coastal resources, access to that knowledge is not widespread. Furthermore, educational barriers exist between scholars and the general populace, the latter whose unawareness of the deteriorating waters may be minimized simply by adopting a different approach. Of course, there exist situations where knowledge of the consequences will not overcome the need to satisfy immediate gains. For instance, despite evidence showing that certain types of fish at specific times should not be caught in order to preserve the entire species, short-term economic incentives at both the individual and industrial scale trump long-term sustainability concerns.

The fishing industry – and, significantly, the Fisheries Agency – is another important stakeholder. The agency plays a role in drafting policies on marine protected areas (MPAs) and concerns itself with local conservation efforts. Technically, as the livelihoods of entire families may depend on fishing and sea resources, measures should be taken to ensure that supply meets demand. Yet, as verbalized by Ostrom, common-pool resources have high levels of subtractability of use and difficulty of exclusion, making the ocean a prime example of the tragedy of the commons. Moreover, governmental subsidies financially supporting the industry make it difficult to break the system of exploitation. This type of agreement is having damaging effects not only on the sea resources, but on the fishermen themselves: as these resources are

over-exploited, the fish species are becoming smaller and their quantity decreases annually.

Ironically, the fish caught through use of industrial gillnets are sold at a lower price, as they will have incurred significant damage. Thus, the government’s tendency to ‘look the other way’ vis-à-vis illegal fishing or by-catch of vulnerable species is only going to backfire on all stakeholders involved. International pressure may act as an incentive for the national government to put more effort into regulating the fishing industry; for instance, the 2015 yellow card from the EU for not doing enough to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing has propelled the Taiwanese government to take measures to ramify their fishing laws to align with (a) EU requirements and (b) the viewpoint of international sustainability of fishery resources. The outcome and legal ramifications, however, are yet to be seen.

Finally, indigenous communities are key stakeholders that have both the incentives and intimate geographical and ecological knowledge to conserve coastal resources for sustainable use and observe cooperative restraint when necessary. These

“institutional rules are supported not just by knowledge of the local environment, but also by deep-rooted social values and belief systems passed down through generations”³⁷¹ that have contributed to maintaining an effective resource conservation regime. For instance, the Tao’s belief system is intricately tied with the ocean, and their traditional calendar is a compendium of marine knowledge aligned with the habitual behaviors of sea life. Involving the indigenes as partners in modern conservation efforts would certainly go a long way towards the preservation and rehabilitation of coral reef ecosystems and the coastal waters as a whole.

As has been demonstrated previously, the conservation of coral reefs deserves priority from both the environmental and economic perspectives of coastal nations. Yet, challenges to reverse the once commonly held premise that oceans are an infinite resource, compounded with debates on jurisdiction, ownership, and subsequent responsibility and funding have complicated the process of decision-making vis-à-vis coastal-marine management. Establishing efficient collaborative governance is further restricted by miscommunication, distrust, past and present conflicts of interest, lack of legal support, and an inability to construct a common goal amongst the complex array of stakeholders involved. The next section thus discusses what can be done to facilitate

371 Tang 2009:103.

the establishment of a collaborative governance of common-pool resources, that is to say, coral reef ecosystems.