The Taiwanese Institutional Arrangements for Ocean and Coastal Management Twenty Years after the Rio Declaration

Abstract

This study examines the Taiwanese institutional arrangements for ocean and coastal management to explore the development of ocean and coastal management in Taiwan 20 years after the “Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.” First, we employed purposive sampling to distribute questionnaires among industry personnel, government officials and personnel, scholars, and personnel of nongovernment organizations (NGOs) involved in institutional arrangements for ocean and coastal management. We recovered 159 effective copies of the 323 distributed questionnaires, for an effective recovery rate of 49.2%. Subsequently, we used descriptive statistics, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and Scheffé's method for post hoc tests to analyze whether the four groups of participants had differing perspectives or cognition levels of the three dimensions and multiple criteria of the institutional arrangements. The results show that (1) for state organizational arrangements, the four groups all disagreed with the Taiwanese government's institutional arrangements for finance and budget allocation, and the government officials and personnel and scholars disagreed with the Taiwanese institutional arrangements for the planning, implementation, and promotion of ocean and coastal management; (2) for legal basis arrangements, the government officials and personnel, scholars, and NGO personnel believed that the existing Taiwanese laws and regulations lacked clear roles, authorization, and responsibilities, as well as coordination and stability; and (3) for non-state organizational arrangements, the scholars considered the non-state organizational arrangements for Taiwan's ocean and coastal management insufficient, which differed significantly from the opinions of the other three groups.

Keywords:

• integrated coastal management
• marine affairs
• marine education
• ocean governance