The legal battle to cancel the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the Central Taiwan Science Park Phase 3 project (specifically the Houli Base – Qixing Farm section) is a landmark case in Taiwan’s environmental legal history. After the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA, now the Ministry of Environment) conditionally approved the initial EIA on July 31, 2006, a Houli farmer named Liao Ming-Tien and five others filed appeals and took the matter to court. On January 31, 2008, the Taipei High Administrative Court ruled in their favor and revoked the EIA approval. Later, on January 21, 2010, the Supreme Administrative Court rejected the EPA’s appeal. This made it the very first time in Taiwan’s history that an EIA approval was officially and permanently canceled by the courts.

However, the National Science Council (NSC, now the National Science and Technology Council) and the EPA refused to order the contractors to stop working, arguing that the development permit was still valid. To make matters worse, on February 10, 2010, the EPA took out half-page ads in Taiwan’s five major newspapers, criticizing the court’s decision as “useless, meaningless, and destructive to the current EIA system.” This sparked massive public outrage. In response, the Houli farmers asked the court for an injunction against the EPA and to halt the NSC’s execution of the project. The Taipei High Administrative Court agreed with the farmers in July 2010, ordering the project to be suspended and all development stopped until a legal EIA was passed. The Supreme Administrative Court also threw out the appeals from the EPA and NSC in September 2010. Still pushing back, the NSC and EPA tried to get around this by ordering a “halt to construction but not to production,” which just fueled the fire. Then, in August 2010, the EPA hastily pushed through another conditional approval for the first-phase EIA.

Not giving up, the farmers, backed by their legal team, filed a second lawsuit in January 2011 to cancel this new EIA, suing both the EPA and the NSC. The Taipei High Administrative Court initially dismissed their case in September 2012. But the farmers appealed again, and in March 2013, the Supreme Administrative Court overturned that dismissal and sent the case back for a retrial. In its ruling, the Supreme Court heavily criticized the EPA. Specifically, they called out the EPA’s logic of using “conditional approval” to claim the project “wouldn’t have a major environmental impact” (and therefore didn’t need a more rigorous Phase 2 EIA). The court pointed out that this reasoning essentially put the cart before the horse, practically making the laws requiring a Phase 2 EIA completely useless.

While the Taipei High Administrative Court was holding the retrial, the judge actually stepped in and proposed a settlement. The farmers and their lawyers stood their ground on protecting the EIA system, refusing to accept the terrible precedent of “building, operating, and doing the EIA all at the same time.” Eventually, the EPA voluntarily announced it would scrap the second EIA approval and ordered the Central Science Park Phase 3 project to undergo the stricter Phase 2 EIA (though they cleverly set the cancellation of the old EIA to take effect only when the new one was passed). After many rounds of tough negotiations, several near-breakdowns, and a lot of compromises, the court’s active mediation finally paid off. On August 8, 2014, both sides reached a formal legal settlement in court. This made history as the very first time a government agency and citizens reached a settlement in an environmental impact assessment case.

Here’s a breakdown of the main settlement terms: The EPA had to buy another half-page newspaper ad, but this time to publish a summary of the Supreme Administrative Court’s ruling against them. The Ministry of Science and Technology (formerly the NSC) agreed to provide NT$30 million to help establish a non-profit foundation, plus an extra NT$5 million per year for four years starting in 2016. This foundation would have a 9-member board of directors. Six of those members would be nominated by five specific civic groups (the Houli Agriculture and Environmental Protection Association, Environmental Jurists Association, Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, Citizen of the Earth Taiwan, and NTU’s Center for Environmental Sustainability, Policy and Law) and then selected by the Ministry. Finally, the Central Taiwan Science Park Bureau had to include the option of “stopping development and restoring the site to its original state” as an alternative plan in the new Phase 2 EIA review.

Our foundation was born directly from this settlement. On October 7, 2015, the Ministry of Science and Technology tasked the Science Park Bureau with holding a meeting to discuss the bylaws for this new foundation with representatives from the five civic groups. They suggested that, keeping with the spirit of the court’s settlement, the new non-profit should be named the “Environmental Rights Foundation.” Later, on March 11, 2016, the Ministry held a donors’ meeting to finalize the bylaws and select the first 9 board members. The very first board meeting was held on September 29, 2016, officially kicking off our mission to protect the environment and environmental rights as guaranteed by the Constitution, the Basic Environment Act, and other laws.

We officially opened our doors on March 12, 2017. Later that year, on November 1, we set up a preparatory office in Taichung (sharing space with the Judicial Reform Foundation) to start tackling environmental issues in central Taiwan, hoping to really put down local roots. In 2020, we established the Fishermen’s Rights and Environmental Sustainability Center. This center helps coastal fishermen get full access to environmental information, participate in public decisions, and access legal help, while also promoting a green economy, local development, ocean sustainability, and ecological conservation. As our work continued to grow, we expanded again in 2024, adding two new departments: the Climate Change & Just Transition Department, and the Corporate Responsibility & International Affairs Department.