Organizers: Alvin Yiu-Cheong So, University of Hawaii; Yok-Shiu Lee, University of Hong Kong
Chair: Esther N. Chow, American University
Discussants: David A. Smith, University of California, Irvine; Reginald Yin-wang Kwok, University of Hawaii
Despite governments’ and businesses’ constant self-congratulations on creating an economic miracle in Asia, evidence is accumulating to suggest that the other face of high-speed growth is an environmental tragedy of massive proportions. As a result, the increasing degradation of the environment in Asia has led to a gradual emergence of environmental consciousness and various types of environmental movements throughout the region since the 1980s. Obviously, Asia’s environmental movements have emerged from totally different political, economic, and cultural contexts from that of their Western counterparts.
The aim of the proposed panel is to initiate a systematic investigation on the origins, transformation, and impact of environmental movements in Asia. This panel identifies four crucial factors—the democratic institution, Asian culture, business’ reaction to environmental movements, and the pioneer effort of anti-nuclear movement—that help to explain the divergent patterns of environmental movements in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Since both the Asian literature and the environmental literature have yet to provide in-depth information and comparative analysis on this important environment movement issue, this panel may be the first study that provides a comparative institutional analysis on this important topic.
Su-Hoon Lee, Kyungnam University, South Korea
The anti-nuclear movements emerged almost the same time in Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong in the second half of the 1980s. In these three territories, the decisions to set up nuclear energy plants in the 1970s and the mid 1980s were made under highly centralized regimes by a small circle of bureaucrats. Nevertheless, in the late 1980s, there was a change of political opportunity structure in these three territories due to democratization and the retreat of authoritarianism. Subsequently, there was an emergence of anti-nuclear voices, complaining about the harmful effect of nuclear waste disposal, nuclear plant accidents, and the undemocratic nature of making nuclear energy decisions. In Taiwan, the anti-nuclear movement’s alliance with the political opposition parties provided the major impetus toward delaying and scaling down the Taiwan government’s nuclear program. In South Korea, where there was no sharp cleavage among the political elites, it was the success of grassroots mobilization and street protests that helped to challenge the Korean government’s nuclear decisions. However, in Hong Kong, despite a strong coalition among community groups in the anti-nuclear movement, the activists were unable to shelve the construction of Daya Bay Nuclear Plant because it was built outside the Hong Kong border in China. This paper argues that although the anti-nuclear movement in Hong Kong has largely evaporated, the anti-nuclear movements in South Korea and Taiwan will continue to gain momentum in the near future.
Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, Academia Sinica
This paper applies a cultural analysis to the study of environmental movements in Taiwan, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. The discussion will focus upon discourse and rituals. This paper argues that although environmentalism in these territories had Western origins and borrowed heavily from Western green thinking, there is an indigenization process of environmentalism going on over the past two decades. Domestic religious discourses (folk religion, the Catholic Church, Buddhism), cultural values (familism, Feng Shui cosmology, and indigenous tradition), and rituals (religious parade, funeral, and the Catholic mass) have played a significant role in "framing," enhancing the solidarity, and empowering the environmental movements, enabling them to challenge the dominant authoritarian states in the 1980s. For example, the Taiwanese local temples are important sites of environmental protests. Local deities, religious parades, the ghost festivals are key components of Taiwanese environmental protests against the polluting companies. In the Philippines, the spirits of the ancestors who reside in the mountains, trees, and lakes are used as claims for the indigenous communities to protect their natural environment from the poaching of the developers. It is this fusion of local religion and native cultural values into the environmental movements that created a distinctive style of Asian environmentalism.
Yok-Shiu Lee and On-Kwok Lai, University of Hong Kong
This paper examines the counter-movement strategies adopted by the business sector in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Thailand. This paper shows that the business sector had tried to actively exert influences on the environmental movements through a variety of means. In Taiwan, due to its radical environmental populism, the Taiwan business people were forced to adopt an exit option to move the pollution industries overseas, to bargain hardly with the government, or to trade "the right to pollute" with fines or compensations when their pollution impacts were discovered. In Hong Kong, due to its large service sector and booming economy, the Hong Kong business people were able to exploit green consumerism to create a favorable image to market its products. Green funding and sponsorship from Hong Kong’s large corporations helped to maintain a highly cooperative relationship between business and environmental movement. In Thailand, taking advantages of the NGO’s meager resources, the Thai business people were even more effective in shaping the agenda of the environmental movement. Since 1995, Thailand’s Annual Environmental Seminar was organized not by the NGOs but by the Bangchak Petroleum Public Co. Ltd. This paper concludes by examining the prospects for the environmental movements in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Thailand in the light of these innovative corporate initiatives.
Francisco Magno and Alvin Yiu-cheong So, University of Hawaii
It is interesting to note the coincidence in the timing of democratic transition and environmental movements in South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. The aim of this paper is to examine in what ways democratic transition and democratic consolidation have shaped the contour of the environmental movements in the four Asian countries. This paper shows that during the critical transition from liberalization to democratic breakthrough in the four Asian countries, environmental movements and democracy movements were generally partners, cross-fertilizing and empowering each other. Being the two strongest social movements in the society, democracy and environmental movements shared the same goals of overthrowing the authoritarian regime and creating a better environment. Nevertheless, during the phases of democratic transition and consolidation, there are a variety of patterns of relationship between democracy movements and environments. Whereas democratization has been achieved as in the cases of Taiwan and South Korea, environmental movements acted either as partners or guardians to the democratic forces. On the other hand, whereas there is a difficulty to attain democratic consolidation as in the cases of the Philippines and Hong Kong, environmental movements have been detoured to either NGOs or bystanders toward the democracy movements.