Kuei Tien Chou is Director of the Risk Society and Policy Research Center at National Taiwan University. He conducts research on risk governance, just transition, and net-zero emissions. He has edited books on energy transition, climate change, and air pollution governance in Asia/East Asia.
Chou explores the structural dilemmas, mindsets, challenges, and solutions of the net-zero transition in Taiwan. Using Taiwan as a representative example of the structural challenges faced by East Asian countries in achieving the global net-zero carbon emission goal, the book examines the proposition of developmental environmentalism in the context of East Asia.
Taiwan faces diverse challenges, such as internal and external net-zero carbon emission pressures, geopolitical socioeconomic competition, an internal carbon-intensive industrial structure, and the path dependence of the brown economy. Within this framework, the developmental net-zeroism perspective, from the vantage point of developmental environmentalism and the distinctive characteristics of Taiwan, offers insights into the climate governance particularities of East Asian countries as high-carbon manufacturing systems and as part of the global supply chain.
A valuable read for researchers and policymakers concerned about the political, economic, and social situations in Asia and Taiwan affecting the net-zero transition.
Introduction
1. Why is Taiwan Delaying the Transition? An East Asian Perspective
2. Analysis Framework: Reflexive Governance on Developmental Environmentalism
Part I Structural High Carbon Path
3. Climate Conventions and High Carbon Path
4. Embedded Distrust: Legacy of Environmental Movements
5. Competing Socio-Technical Imagination on Energy Transition and Decarbonization
Part II Deadlock of Transition
6. Weak Socially Robust Knowledge in Net-Zero Transition Movement
7. Reinforced Carbon Locked-in: Three Missed Opportunities of Carbon Tax
8. Climate Governance Delayism and its Limited Carbon Pricing
Part III Trigger Net-Zero
9. Developmental Net-Zeroism
10. Democratic Deliberative Deficit under Developmental Net-Zeroism
11. Boil Frag in Warm Water: Transition Lag and Anxiety of the Enterprises
Conclusion
12. Rethinking Developmental Net-Zeroism in East Asia
Chou explores the structural dilemmas, mindsets, challenges, and solutions of the net-zero transition in Taiwan. Using Taiwan as a representative example of the structural challenges faced by East Asian countries in achieving net-zero carbon emissions, the book examines developmental environmentalism in the East Asian context.
