消失的農漁民：重探台灣早期環境抗爭

Vanishing Farmers: Taiwan's Early Environmental Protests Revisited

現代意義下的環境運動在各國的發跡各有不同。西歐與北美的環境運動除了是1960年代學運和反戰浪潮下的一支，也是對諸多環境安全事件（例如殺蟲劑使用與食品安全）的爭辯與反省。從台灣1970年代的環境抗爭來看，戰後第一波環境衝突源於農工部門爭奪自然資源使用權與配置權，農漁民的訴求明確反映了高度商品化的農業部門利益，其行動亦代表了小農階級在工業資本擴張、不利環境之下所做的垂死掙扎。然而隨著知識分子的論述介入，1980與 1990年代的台灣環境運動由「當地居民」取代「農民」，「普世利益」取代「經濟利益」，開始了一種「普世運動」的建造工程。這個追求「普遍利益」的運動固然建構出一個包容各方勢力的平台，然而它也擱置了弱勢階級的經濟利益，避談分配議題，放棄了結合環境與階級議題的另種運動路線。而在環境運動的歷史書寫中，農漁民以環境抗爭來保衛經濟利益並沒有獲得重視，反而強化了環境運動重「普世利益」、輕「階級利益」的傾向。

Forms of modern, mass-based environmental activism have emerged with different sizes and shapes. On both sides of the Atlantic, environmental movements of the 1960s arose in response to environmental hazards disturbing the landscapes of affluent societies. As a late industrializer, Taiwan's first wave of environmental actions began as an inter-sectoral struggle over the access and control of natural resources in the early 1970s. Aided by the developmental state, industrial capital seized water resources and took arable land away from smallholding farmers to build industrial parks and factories. Without proper regulations in place, unregulated liquid toxins were dumped in the surrounding irrigation systems, the emission of harmful fumes resulted in crop failure, and groundwater and fishing harbors were badly contaminated. Understandably, farmers and fishers continuously protested against such industrial practices and demanded proper compensations. Yet the intervention of intellectuals and middle classes, armed with an American-styled, class-interest-free version of environmentalism, changed the landscape of the environmental struggle. The early 1980s heralded the birth of an environmental movement wary of public health and food safety, yet devoid of genuine concerns about the economic survival of the disadvantaged. Previous struggles prompted by agricultural livelihoods had been forgotten and unequal distribution of natural resources unaddressed, and in the next ten to fifteen years, this movement bulldozed the opportunity to simultaneously pursue ecological and economic justice.