dc.description.abstract | Since the declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment announced at 1972, environmental issues have been already increased gradually. In early periods, most of the environmental issues may include pollutions, wildlife protections, issues of developing countries, water quality deteriorations, soil liquefaction and the impact of trading and technology transfer of economic development. With the development of the technology, our lives have been increasingly more convenient. However, the air and water pollution exacerbated in the meantime. These pollutions cause a lot of problems around the world, such as derivative toxic chemicals, ozone depletion, land deterioration, disruption of biodiversity and climate change. Even so, we probably couldn’t treat them as a local issue because of their diffusibility and systematization. On the other hand, we should discuss and investigate the environmental issues under a global, comprehensive architecture of theory.
The environmental issues have become a world-wide challenge of all human kind. Due to globalization, Taiwan, as a member of the citizens of Earth, also cannot free from them. Even in recent years, environmental issues are wildly discussed in both public and private sectors of Taiwan.
The researcher now lives in Sanxia District of New Taipei City. Sanxia Asphalt Plant had been located in Xinan Li of Sanxia District since 1969. After that, Sanxia Asphalt Plant had produced a lot of air and noise pollution for a long time. The neighborhoods complained about the pollution many times but it never worked. Even the EPA of New Taipei City issued several fine penalties for this. Since April 2011, residents started to discuss and plan a protest action on the local internet forum and community. At June 25 2011, they prompted an “Anti Air Pollution Protest” which one thousand people attended. Meanwhile, New Taipei City hosted several seminars to communicate with residents continually and agreed to setup several pollution monitoring systems to response the request from residents. Finally, at July 14, Sanxia Asphalt Plant was demolished.
The researcher partially participated the organization and mobilization of this protest. Actually, it can be said with certainty that Sanxia Asphalt Plant was demolished because of the social movement and citizen participation of local residents. In this essay, the researcher will try to research following topics according to documentations and literatures regarding social movement and citizen participation:
1. Explore the reasons, requests and strategy of the “Anti Sanxia Asphalt Plant” protest action.
2. Investigate the predicament of citizen participation during the action.
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