The main executive content of the Research Team includes four major parts: (1) doing research on legal system of environmental impact assessment and relevant cases of different countries such as Germany, Japan, and United States and drawing the procedures of environmental impact assessment; (2) reviewing significant judicial decisions concerning current legal system of environmental impact assessment of Taiwan and submitting suggestions for further amending the legal system; (3) proposing the bills for the amendments of the Environmental Impact Assessment Act and the Environmental Impact Assessment Enforcement Rules and the bill for the Guidelines for Evaluating and Selecting the Third-Party Contractors to Prepare Environmental Documents ; and (4) convening five public meeting of Environmental Impact Assessment and Reviewing System and inviting experts, scholars, and the public to participate. The Research Team has done with the analysis of the basic ideas, functions, and legal theories of environmental impact assessment, elaborated its necessity of the enforcement of the assessment, pointed out relevant legal issues, and proposed the solutions for the problems. In the perspective of comparative legal study, the Research Team has introduced the environmental impact assessment of different countries such as Japan, United States, and Germany and in pursuant to the analysis of cases and judicial decisions, compared with each country’s legal system regarding their advantages and disadvantages. In addition, the Research Team has finished the first working progress report, midterm report, and five consulting meetings of Environmental Impact Assessment and Reviewing System (the participants included the representatives recommended by environmental groups, the industry competent authorities, local governments, and specialists and scholars).

Environmental Impact Assessment, development approval, judicial review