Summary

As early as 2016, President Tsai Ing-wen pledged to fight against air pollution and the ruling party also highlighted the improvement of air quality as the main policy goal of 2017. In order to smooth the implementation of the EPA's air pollution control program, the Executive Yuan called for the formal Yuan-level consultation attended by the ministries and departments to discuss the possible issues that could emerge when the program is carried out, focusing on how to forge a negotiated and integrated approach. The "14 + N Air Pollution Prevention Strategy" launched in April 2017 can be regarded as the most specific policy measures aiming to improve air quality in recent years. In addition to setting out the concrete reduction targets for major pollution sources, the corresponding measures of how to achieve them are also proposed, especially on the reduction of primary and derivative sources of PM2.5. Different from the past when air pollution control program only stated policy goals but no details of the budget plan, the government, Taipower and private sector this time have invested a total of 215 billion NTDs. However, in the winter of 2017, Taiwanese people have suffered serious air pollution threats, the consecutive warning of red pollution level. This proves to be miserable especially to the people who reside in the southern Taiwan where air quality is often marked as "unhealthy to all groups of people”.

Considering the EPA has only been reforming air quality control measures for one year, the policies may not have achieved satisfactory results and the measures maybe not perfect. However, the need for a reformed air quality governance of Taiwan is still very urgent. In particular, the major air pollutants like PM2.5 present a serious threat when the detected level far exceeds the set standards. Compared to the statutory standards of an average level of 15μg / m3, among all the air quality observation stations, only the annual average of PM2.5 concentration of Ilan Station (less than 15μg / m3 at the beginning of 2016), Taitung Station and Hualien Station, Yangmingshan Station, Hengchun Station, five stations in total, meet the statutory air quality standards, nonetheless two of them are within the perimeter of a national park. According to the PM2.5 concentration readings acquired by the automatic stations and listed in the EPA’s 2016 Air Quality Monitoring Report, only 9 stations out of 72 stations pass the standards. The failure rate is as high as 88%. Up to 31% of the stations are at a density> 25μg / m3 which can be seen as the area of a disastrous air pollution, and 25% of the stations are at> 20μg / m3, which means that most areas in Taiwan are exposed to high health risks. Chang Chuan-Chan, the Dean of the National Taiwan University Public Health College, bluntly stated that Taiwan's air pollution problem, if take the health and economic costs into account, can be twenty times more serious than the government assumed. This health hazard can even become a national security issue.

The center's research team suggests that the contemporary governance of air quality is by no means limited to the technical level of "air pollution control technology", nor could it be simply tackled with by the "regulatory control" and "economic incentive" of the traditional air pollution control strategy. The National Research Council (NRC) General Review of Air Quality Management in 2004 pointed out that improving the accountability of governance is necessary in order to improve air quality. The air quality issue, from the perspective of European paradigm of governance on emerging risks, involves the issue of the overall Taiwanese society transboundary risk governance, which relates to industry, energy and transport transformation. For example, why 14 + N only set the policy standards to 18μg / m3 which could not reach the statutory standards, and its estimated policy tools are the result of the optimisation of regulatory control and economic incentive, based on current situation and BACT emission regulations. In other words, without industry, energy and transportation transformation at the national level, people in Taiwan may continue to suffer from poor air quality. Therefore, from a governance perspective, air quality is highly correlated with the national strategy of low-carbon and non-coal (reduced) coal. However, at present, the greenhouse gas and air pollution regulatory policy are running on their own path, and are often put on separate political agenda despite the high correlation with the national strategic of energy and industry transformation. If they can be integrated, there will be a better way of estimating the expected benefits and evaluating the effectiveness of the policies. In addition, the transportation revolution of reducing the use of fossil fuel involves a drastic change, and it is not achievable without the whole national efforts, which is far more than just providing subsidies for electric vehicles and diesel vehicle modification.

Therefore, from the perspective of Transboundary Risk Governance, this paper first documents the progress of air pollution policy in the past 10 years and the current governance innovation and its limitations, discussing the current issues, as well as gives analysis and suggestions to emissions documentations and energy transformation, and finally provides suggestions for the unsettled framework of governance, which includes citizen science that can foster innovation in governance. The paper also draws reference from South Korea’s air pollution policy, and the concept of science and risk communication which bridges between policy and public perception (controversies). Through this paper, we hope to provide some perspectives on governance so that air quality regulations in Taiwan can break through the existing difficulties and make the environment clean; we hope the whole citizens can, as a result, breathe freely.