ABSTRACT
The examination of climate governance in Taiwan requires a long-term perspective of social transformation – of the triple helix interaction of energy and carbon emissions, industry, and air pollution control – to dissect them. From the challenges faced during the structural transformation of these three facets, we can see the long-term efforts and predicaments that the government has encountered towards climate policy, and the corresponding criticisms from civil society and its power to reverse decisions.
It is worth analyzing how the policy decision-making of high-carbon regimes has continued to revolve around and be stuck in the ideology of the brown economy that was the dominant drive of the developmental state in the past, and even the dual vertical and horizontal pressures of international climate agreements and internal domestic criticisms and demands have not directly resulted in structural shake-ups or reversals. What we have to take into consideration is what the structural impediments are that have prevented the transformation of governance, that is, from the Asian perspective of cosmopolitan climate governance, it is necessary to analyze which path dependency has resulted in the quandary of national governance and even of social transformation, including that of the developmental state, the politics of authoritarian regimes, the economy’s high-carbon makeup and the brown energy framework. This chapter shows that living under a deeply-embedded high-carbon economy and brown energy structure has meant that climate and energy transition has been slow-moving and constrained.
