Analyze

The project "Researching Kaohsiung Archive: practice and reflection" is a collaborative effort with the UCI team addressing the global environmental injustice record in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, particularly focusing on the slow and accumulative harm caused by petrochemical development. Under the Environmental Injustice Global Record (EIGR) website, the Kaohsiung Archive serves as a trans-disciplinary platform for data archiving and communication. Since joining in 2021, the team has collected and visualized diverse data sources, engaging stakeholders in collaboration. The archive development involves addressing key questions related to environmental justice studies, fostering brainstorming and reflection. The project acts as a boundary object, connecting local and international communities, providing an information infrastructure for social dialogue,and aiming to contribute to a sustainable transformation discourse on the risks of petrochemical developments in Kaohsiung. The long-term impact on academic production method and knowledge dissemination remains to be seen, but the project aspires to inspire co-creation, cross-border cooperation,and innovation to empower civil society and enhance environmental justice governance.

The creation of the Kaohsiung Archive begins with a series of questions, utilizing the Environmental Justice (EJ) study framework applied to Hawaii as a guide. These questions delve into the influence of industries on environmental governance and advocacy, exploring the strategiesemployed. The process involves collaborative efforts to answer these questions, fostering brainstorming, debates, and reflections on characterizing the setting and revealing environmental injustice within the case study.

Following workshops and fieldwork in Kaohsiung, the project evolved to formulate narrative structures for mapping and visualizing environmental injustice in the region. Objectives include outlining Kaohsiung's features, focusing on petrochemical-related air pollution and industrial transformation issues, and designing relays to illustrate the challenges faced by fence-line communities and showcase potential action initiatives.

The project's progression involves tracking the issue, identifying and categorizing stakeholders, as well as gathering information and experiences from various parties. Stakeholder claims are sorted out, and efforts are made to find common action goals. Discursive risk analysis is conducted, examining environmental monitoring issues around petrochemical facilities. For instance, in Dashe, there is a focus on the discursive gaps between local residentsand petrochemical workers, revealing disparities in perceptions of air quality and expectations regarding governmental control.

Source

Tu, Wen Ling. 2023. " Researching Kaohsiung Archive: Practice and Reflection." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

The project "Researching Kaohsiung Archive: practice and reflection" is a collaborative effort with the UCI team addressing the global environmental injustice record in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, particularly focusing on the slow and accumulative harm caused by petrochemical development. Under the Environmental Injustice Global Record (EIGR) website, the Kaohsiung Archive serves as a trans-disciplinary platform for data archiving and communication. Since joining in 2021, the team has collected and visualized diverse data sources, engaging stakeholders in collaboration. The archive development involves addressing key questions related to environmental justice studies, fostering brainstorming and reflection. The project acts as a boundary object, connecting local and international communities, providing an information infrastructure for social dialogue,and aiming to contribute to a sustainable transformation discourse on the risks of petrochemical developments in Kaohsiung. The long-term impact on academic production method and knowledge dissemination remains to be seen, but the project aspires to inspire co-creation, cross-border cooperation,and innovation to empower civil society and enhance environmental justice governance.

The creation of the Kaohsiung Archive begins with a series of questions, utilizing the Environmental Justice (EJ) study framework applied to Hawaii as a guide. These questions delve into the influence of industries on environmental governance and advocacy, exploring the strategiesemployed. The process involves collaborative efforts to answer these questions, fostering brainstorming, debates, and reflections on characterizing the setting and revealing environmental injustice within the case study.

Following workshops and fieldwork in Kaohsiung, the project evolved to formulate narrative structures for mapping and visualizing environmental injustice in the region. Objectives include outlining Kaohsiung's features, focusing on petrochemical-related air pollution and industrial transformation issues, and designing relays to illustrate the challenges faced by fence-line communities and showcase potential action initiatives.

The project's progression involves tracking the issue, identifying and categorizing stakeholders, as well as gathering information and experiences from various parties. Stakeholder claims are sorted out, and efforts are made to find common action goals. Discursive risk analysis is conducted, examining environmental monitoring issues around petrochemical facilities. For instance, in Dashe, there is a focus on the discursive gaps between local residentsand petrochemical workers, revealing disparities in perceptions of air quality and expectations regarding governmental control.

Tu, Wen Ling. 2023. " Researching Kaohsiung Archive: Practice and Reflection." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

Climbing this "disposal" cell was the main event of our guided tour of the Weldon Spring's Interpretive Center. It represents the "finished product" of the toxic waste clean up project and Legacy Management site. Engineered and constructed with 8 layers of strategically chosen materials, the cell is expected to "deter the migration of [its] contaminants" for up to 1000 years. Thus, it is really more of a storage cell than a disposal cell...

Some of the questions coming from our group concerned the criteria of assessment used to determine the cell's long term durability and functionality. For instance, the cell was designed to control and treat leachate--water that has become contaminated from seeping through the cell--but this capacity has its limits. Though the cell has been designed to handle well-over the historical record of rainfall in the area, climate change has rendered history an ineffective means of predicting the severity of weather in the future.

Another concern is the transfer of knowledge about the cell and its toxic contents. How do we make sure no one opens it up (or blows it up) over the course of 1000 years? The strategy of the DOE is to monitor the cell by testing the local area for contaminants, maintaining strict military surveillance over the area, and by using the interpretive center to educate tourists and the local community about the cell, i.e. Legacy Management. But the US federal government's (or any institution's) ability to keep this up for 1000 years is obviously questionable, at the very best. What is certain here is that, by managing nuclear waste, with its inhuman time scales and the correlate amplification of complexity, we are venturing into uncharted waters. The DOE wants to create the impression that everything is under control and it may be, for the time being. It is also reasonable to take pains not to incite widespread fear and panic. But it is similarly important to recognize that we, in this moment, simply cannot be in control over 1000 years of possibility.

One of the main vulnerabilities that affect the community, is time and money. As the individuals have to wait for a long time, the report estimates that approximately 810,680 gallons of fuel is burned and wasted. This is a paramount issue with the rising cost of gas everyday. As many say, time is money. This relates to those stuck in these jams because these jams, along with large amounts of gas also wastes a lot of time. Motorists spend about 1.5 million hours annually sitting in traffic annually. In addition, $38 are wasted in those 1.5 million hours.