Combating Air Pollution through Data Generation and Reinterpretation: Community Air Monitoring in Taiwan

Abstract

Although cities in Taiwan are not as choked by smog as Beijing or Delhi, where people can hardly enjoy blue skies, air pollution is still a serious problem and has repeatedly aroused social concerns in central and southern Taiwan since 2010. Unsatisfied with the government’s passive responses, the citizen groups in Taiwan have initiated several air monitoring projects to develop air-pollution claims and contest the deficiencies of the official air-pollution standard, data, and regulatory actions. Inspired by the concept of social movement–based citizen science, this article discusses how local community people have participated in knowledge production by integrating their observations and experiences into the scientific practices of air monitoring. The discussions particularly address citizens’ data generation and interpretation efforts that signaled the alternative air quality information and triggered on-demand responses from the government to improve the air quality management measures. The analysis further highlights the characteristics of community air monitoring in Taiwan as well as its potentials and limitations.

Abstract

雖然台灣都會區的空氣不像中國北京或印度德里總是霧霾遮天那般的嚴重,但空污仍是一個嚴重的問題,自2010年之後,更引起台灣中南部居民不間斷的社會關注。不滿意政府被動的回應態度,一些台灣的民間團體發起了空氣監測的實驗計畫,為強調空氣污染嚴重性的主張發聲,並挑戰官方空氣品質標準、資料生產與管制行動的缺失。立基在社會運動為主的公民科學觀點,本文討論地方社區團體如何將他們的觀察與經驗,結合系統性的空污監測實做,進而產生政策上的影響。本文特別著重於公民資料生產與詮釋的努力,因為其提供了理解地方空氣品質的替代性管道,並促成政府正視民間需求,從而尋求發展空氣品質管理監測的改善計畫。回應公民空污監測科學的既有文獻,分析中也特別強調台灣社區空氣監測的特色,及其發展的潛力與限制。

• citizen science
• community air monitoring
• social movement
• data generation
• data interpretation
• Taiwan

• 關鍵字: 公民科學
• 社區空氣監測
• 社會運動
• 資料生產
• 資料詮釋
• 台灣

Acknowledgments

I thank Shun-Ling Chen, Fa-ti Fan (coeditors of this special issue), and two anonymous reviewers of East Asian Science, Technology and Society for their very valuable and insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article. I am thankful to my colleagues and assistants who have helped me develop the ideas and collect data presented here, especially Kuei-Tien Chou and Chia-Liang Shih, among many others. Finally, I am grateful to the Ministry of Science and Technology (Taiwan) for its financial support of my research on which this article is based.

Notes

¹ TPP consists of ten 550 megawatt coal-burning units, making it the world’s largest coal-fired power plant,and also the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide with approximately forty million tons annually. It provides 19 percent of Taiwan’s electricity. Reference from the Source Watch, at www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Taichung_power_station (accessed 3 July 2018).

The SNCP hosts sixty-six factories, including refineries, power plants, vinyl chloride monomer production, and harbors on its offshore 2,630-hectare marine reclamation land. Its annual production value was around US$53 billion in 2016, which is around 10 percent of Taiwan’s GDP.

² For more information about CET, please refer to their official website at www.cet-taiwan.org/node/2190 (accessed 3 July 2018).

³ According to Liu (2012), there were 59 industrial parks developed in Taiwan since 1964; 44 of them are located in counties and cities along the west coast and 15 of them are located in coastal townships and districts.

⁴ Based on geographical and meteorological conditions and the nature of air contaminants, the EPA has divided the nation into seven air-quality zones (see figure 1)—northern, Chu-Miao, central, Yun-Chia-Nan, Kao-Ping, Hua-Tung, and Yilan—and announced total quantity control zones accordingly.

⁵ The APTQC system tasks include 1) establish air quality standards, 2) establish an effective air-quality-monitoring station network, 3) designate air-quality zones and phase-in proclamation of total quantity control zones, 4) draft and enforce total quantity control plans and air pollution control programs, 5) divide air-quality zones into compliance and noncompliance zones according to the status of air quality, 6) enforce total quantity reduction in those zones not in compliance with air-quality standards; allowable pollutant increase limits in those zones in compliance with air-quality standards, and 7) promote an emission saving, exchanging, and trading system with economic incentives.

⁶ The index was based on measurements of the concentrations of five pollutants: PM₁₀, SO₂, NO₂, CO, and O_3. Air-quality standards had been developed for each of these, and the highest of five numbers is reported as the PSI for the day. Information can be accessed at the Taiwan EPA website at www.epa.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=61145&CtNode=35719&mp=epaen (accessed 3 July 2018).

⁷ The EPA replaced the PSI with the AQI on “Taiwan Air Quality Monitoring Network (TAQMN)” after the agency adopted the new index in 2016.

⁸ The AQI is based on monitoring data on the same day in the air (PM₁₀, PM_2.5, SO₂, NO₂, CO, and O₃). The AQI is divided into six categories to indicate increasing levels of health concern. An AQI value below fifty represents good quality, and a value over three hundred is considered to be hazardous. For more information, please refer to TAQMN at taqm.epa.gov.tw/taqm/en/ (accessed 3 July 2018).

⁹ For more information, please refer to “Since the SNCP Came” website, fpccgoaway.blogspot.com/ (accessed 3 July 2018).

¹⁰ “Yushan Snow” was painted in 1947 by the well-known Taiwanese painter Tan Ting-pho (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tan_Ting-pho, accessed 3 July 2018), who sacrificed his life as a result of the 2.28 incident in 1947. The painting was painted in Chiayi City from Tan’s old home, and it clearly shows the snow on top of mountain with no signs of smog or pollution. It has become a luxury for the people to see such a clear sky in modern days.

¹¹ See figure 1 for the EPA air-quality monitoring stations distribution.

¹² Information from the Puli PM_2.5 Air Reduction Self-Help Group Facebook page, www.facebook.com/pulipm2.5/ (accessed 3 July 2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wen-Ling Tu

Wen-Ling Tu is a professor in the Department of Public Administration at National Chengchi University, Taiwan. She received her PhD in environmental planning from the University of California, Berkeley. Her main research interests include knowledge construction for environmental governance, politics of science in environmental disputes, environmental justice, citizen science, and public participation. She is an active organizer of citizen deliberative forums on various kinds of policy issues in Taiwan. Her recent works focus on air governance, nuclear-waste-siting issues, and identifying least-conflict approaches for renewable energy development.