Democratization,Intergovernmental Relations,and Watershed Management in Taiwan

Abstract

This article focuses on the effects of democratization and changing intergovernmental relations on Taiwan’s watershed management. It also includes the case of the TaipeiWatershed Management Bureau in managing an individual watershed, the Taipei Water Special Area, to assess the problems of intergovernmental coordination and collaboration in watershed management under the context of Taiwan’s democratization. This article indicates that efforts to promote intergovernmental coordination and local support cannot be avoided to achieve watershed policy effectiveness, despite the recent centralization of water governance and a restructuring of a commission-based agency into a single-head agency. It argues that under the effect of democratization, watershed management in Taiwan must be capable of dealing with the issues of local participation, intergovernmental coordination and collaboration, and conflicting demands on water and land resources management, to include a demand for adequate compensation of stakeholder costs, if watershed management is to be both sustainable and legitimate.