The 10th-year anniversary of the campaign to found the sustainability department under the student government of NTU is on the horizon. While I have shared some of the important reasons and strategic choices we made behind the campaign in the 10th-year anniversary event of NTU Climate Action Club back in December 2024, I feel that it is worthwhile to go through the events again in detail, not from the lens of one of the enabling school clubs, but from the department itself.

Motives behind a sustainability department

So while NTU CAC and other environmental clubs were networking and discussing a potential collective platform in the summer and early autumn of 2016, there was this historical coincidence where the incumbent student government just happened to resign and a re-election for the president of the government was taking place.

I was probably the first one to bring up the possibility of demanding a sustainability department from the candidates during the election campaign. Needless to say, my inspiration came from TWYCC’s climate election campaigns of 2014 and 2016. I have always felt being left out of the nowadays-lionized social movement hey-days between Spring 2014 and the end of President Ma’s regime, and there was undoubtedly a personal urge to at least replicate the successes of my Senpais on a campus level just before I graduate and leave Taiwan¹. But beyond the more selfish reasons, what was the motives for me and others who agreed upon this strategy?

Looking back at an archived article on public education I wrote for Let’s News, it was obvious that in summer of 2016 the fact that NTU held substantial investment in petrochemical and other highly polluting / carbon intensive industries was still not on the agenda of CAC or any other environmental clubs in NTU, as the article stated that divestment campaigns in the US / UK were totally alien to the Taiwanese students without any mentioning of NTU’s own investment portfolio. Not to mention in the Joint Statement of Calling for the Student Government to Found the Sustainability Department, the successful stories of divestment in the US were cited, without a word on demanding divestment in NTU either.

These direct pieces of evidence aligned with my own memory of only finding out the “dirty secret” of the school after the new student government had formed and the working group for setting up the sustainability department was discussing actual strategic agendas we would be adopting once the department was founded. In any case, divestment soon became one of the two major agendas the sustainability department pushed heavily during its existence. There was, in retrospect, undoubtedly a greater legitimacy to make such demand under the collective effort of both the student government and the environmental clubs on campus, instead of just pushing it by student clubs alone.

In any case, divestment was not on the agenda when NTU’s sustainability election campaign of 2016 was launched, but we still had good reasons to launch the campaign anyway.

Firstly, while issues like divestment were not yet raised when environmental clubs in NTU decided to launch their own version of climate election campaign, it was expected that these types of issues would pop up eventually once there was a dedicated department for campus sustainability under the student government. The idea was that once the student government was obligated to hold personnel studying sustainable issues on campus, they sooner or later will discover agendas and goals to work on. This is of course not without risk, as without proper planning, there is always the possibility of the dedicated department creating non-existing or secondary problems to solve. The tradition of appointing a member of different environmental clubs as the head (the minister) of the sustainability department mitigated this risk as they had at least some knowledge of what sustainability issues might be worthwhile to discuss on the campus, but such tradition also created the perpetual friction between the department and the student parliament from day one of its foundation, until its formal demise (more on that later).

Secondly, if we extend this logic of dedicated personnel bringing up sustainability issues naturally, then dedicated institutions on sustainability at the university level should also be pursued, and better if students also gained a saying in such institutions. This was why demanding the creation of the sustainability office and student’s representation in university committees relevant to campus sustainability became the other major agenda during the life span of the sustainability department.

One thing I think did affect our decision-making was the “Green Studying Abroad” event held by NTUCAC on around 5th of October that year, where the main speaker (then studying in the Netherlands) discussed his experience with the sustainability committee in the student parliament and the sustainability office of University of Maryland. His experience provided a precedent for a well-established institution within both the student government and the university, and his later return to NTU as a staff member quickly proved to be invaluable for the sustainability department and other environmental clubs on campus during both the divestment campaign and the campaign for setting up a sustainability office.

Preparing for the campaign

There was of course some opposition or reserved opinions within members of the environmental clubs. Some worried the consequence of muddling into student politics (which proved to have some merits), while others questioned the necessity of demanding a department (which would require approval of the parliament) and not simply a working group. For the former type of concern, I think the point was to make sure that the environmental clubs would still function independently of the student government and keep out of the politics if they desired so. For the latter type of concern, I think we argued that while a working group could also work, a department would 1) make a clear statement on its own that NTU students cared much on campus sustainability and 2) make the founding of the department (or not) the core issue during the campaign and enabling discussion of sustainability issues on campus.

Back-and-forth debates went on for some weeks, but eventually four clubs were on board: the Roots and Shoots Club, the NTU Conservation Club, the Animal Rights Club, and the Climate Action Club where I was in. The joining of the Animal Rights Club was a total surprise as I have not learnt any animal rights theory then. As I wrote in the December 2024 article, that was my first proper experience with veganism.

In any case, I remember that we started the preparation of the campaign around the beginning of October. A joint statement of the four clubs, explaining 1) the need for a sustainability department, 2) examples from around the world, 3) issues that the department could potentially help address, and 4) promises we wished the candidates could make, was laid out.

On the 22nd of October 2016, two weeks before the election day, the joint statement was posted on NTU’s main Facebook group, while a signature campaign was launched at the same time. If I remembered correctly, we probably gathered 200 to 300 signatures, while about two-thirds of the 12 candidates (it was, surprisingly, a very active election) promised to fulfill the demands on the joint statement.

In the end, one of the candidates who agreed to found the sustainability department won the election on early November, and to her credit, she did keep her promise and allow the department to carry out the agendas both listed on the joint statement and also discussed later in the working group for setting up the sustainability department in the remaining months of the first semester. To my knowledge, my service as the minister of the sustainability department under her probably represented the time when the department enjoyed the highest autonomy and lowest frictions with the parliament.

The actual founding and initial works of the department

During the remaining months of the first semester, while the newly elected student government president hastily proposed ministerial appointments for the existing departments, she also created a working group for setting up the sustainability department. Members from the four clubs joined and discussed which agenda to pursue and how to proceed once the department was founded. It was also decided that I would be the first minister, while the former main organizer for the roots and shoots club would be the deputy minister for the department.

In the second semester of the school year, the student government formally proposed the founding of the sustainability department to the parliament. At that point of history, the parliament was still observing (and many representatives were also curious probably) how the department would function, so little opposition was posed, and the motion passed without much drama. Although, due to the infamous inefficiency of their meetings, I did wait for a few hours before my chance to show up and present the case for the department. Therefore, while the meeting was scheduled on the 7th of March 2017, it already passed midnight when the sustainability department was formally founded². This delay was a blessing in disguise, as future ministers could then celebrate both the International Women’s Day and the anniversary of the department at once.

The first semester for the sustainability department was more or less a semester for setting the stage for future maneuver. The disclosure of the inefficiency of electricity usage in the general library (due to the wrong operational set points of the ice thermal storage system) and the electricity conservation workshop in the department building for sociology and social work were more or less what CAC could have done on its own, but nevertheless raising issues on energy efficiency and equity using student government’s platform showcased the potential leverage the student government could have had, if they had representatives in a dedicated sustainability committee / office of the school. Showing up on some sustainability events and making speeches within or outside the campus allowed more people to know about the existence of the department. Sending representatives to monitor the progress of the ecological engineering around the campus and the tender of providers for school cafeteria regularly was about setting a precedent of the student government actively engaging and providing feedbacks on relevant projects. And finally, the first formal demand from the student government to divest from petrochemical and other highly polluting industries occurred during the semester. Coincidently, one of the cement companies NTU invested in then was found extracting near the border of a national park and indigenous territories later that semester and ignited public outrage, strengthening our case for divestment from it.

As mentioned earlier, the second student government of 2016/17 gave a high degree of autonomy to the sustainability department, and probably all other departments in general. Indeed, compared with her proceeding and succeeding presidents, the student president then believed in a more decentralized style of governance and trusted the departments to perform their tasks mostly with their own agency. It should also be noted that the sustainability department was not the only department where she sought for people outside her election campaign group for help after winning the election. She, for example, also asked the former editor of Let’s News to run the news department, which was a total but welcomed surprise for us in the sustainability department. It was during this time the media department changed strategies dramatically and became more centered in student advocacy.

Time flies, and soon end of June came and the semester ends. Formally speaking my official duty ends on 31st of July, but in summer vacation there were only a few parliament meetings on confirming budget usage. There were no sharp questions (in fact, I hardly remember any representatives asking me a question) during these final meetings. I was not sure whether that was good or bad then, but consider the accounts of my successors I was probably very lucky³.

However, just before the semester came to an end, the first crisis for the survival of the department occurred. The student president candidate from the opposing parliament faction expressed doubts on whether under his rule the sustainability department should continue to exist. Luckily, during his election campaign (which he eventually won), we came to the agreement that the current deputy minister (who, fortunately, he knew of well before)⁴ would help him form the sustainability department under his government and adopt strategies more coherent with his overall government style. To his credit (and fortunately for the sustainability advocacy on campus), not only did he keep his promise of keeping the sustainability department, his governing style, while more centralized, was also much more policy and advocacy focused, which my succeeding minister gladly adhere to.

And to be fair, the school year of 2017/18 was wild for NTU, with gangsters entering the campus committing violent offenses, financial scandals surrounding the parliament, and all the controversies that occurred during the university principal election. Under all this crazy shit, it was remarkable that the sustainability department still managed to launch a campaign asking for the principal candidates to divest if they ever got elected. Whatever controversies surrounding the elected principal (and there were a lot, with good reasons), one silver lining to his victory was that he was the few candidates (perhaps the only one actually) who did agree to review the investment portfolio of NTU, and eventually the divestment decision was made under his term in the school year 2019/20.

My assistance to the department after leaving NTU

I began my study in the master’s program of renewable energy engineering and management at the University of Freiburg in the school year of 2017/18. Although physically no longer in NTU, I would more often than not still provide assistance to the sustainability department whenever asked.

For instance, in the early months of my study in Freiburg, there was an exchange student from Cornell University who was fighting for the divestment campaign back in the US. We kept in touch long after she returned to the States and exchanged information on the latest progress of divestment in the US, Germany, and Taiwan. I passed some of the information she provided to my successor minister for preparing the case of divestment in NTU. The divestment discussions within Freiburg were also passed on to members of the sustainability department then.

Later, in April 2019, I was invited to a regular meeting of the sustainability department during my return visit to Taiwan. The minister then was the project manager for waste reduction during my term, and I remembered having a nice discussion on many things, including the zero-waste food shop in Freiburg where I bought the vegan gummi bears, and also my first-hand experience of the climate movement in Germany (which was at a historical peak).

At that time, NTU’s divestment promise was not yet set in stone, but the department was beginning to hold meetings with the university discussing the matter. The founding of the sustainability office was another regularly discussed topic between the university and the department, now with the help of a staff member who was previously a member of CAC (the one who gave the “Green Studying Abroad” presentation back in October 2016) as a coordinator.

All in all, I took great satisfaction in seeing the department not only alive but thriving. When former and active members in the sustainability department, NTUCAC, and Let’s News all gathered at my birthday party during that return visit, it seemed like all three organizations could continue to prosper forever.

The end of the department

As I stated in the December 2024 article, the sustainability department was eventually dissolved. Below I will, as much as I can, reconstruct the chain of events which led to this unfortunate conclusion. However, as I already left NTU when all of this was happening, most of the information I provide here are second-hand sources I gathered from the testimonies of succeeding ministers and department members (the department lived so short that I happened to know all succeeding ministers up to the 2019/20 school year in person).

If we look at the timeline, the irony cannot be more obvious:

• 28th November 2019: NTU announced a restructuring of their investment portfolios based on ESG rules and, in particular, the divestment from petrochemical industries and other industries the sustainability department had demanded of.
• September 2020: Student government of NTU dissolves (technically speaking, stops proposing the continuation of) the department of sustainability.
• 2022: NTU created the sustainability office and a dedicated committee on SDG.

So basically, the department of sustainability was dissolved when one of its founding agendas had been achieved (although monitoring work was still needed), while the other was under discussion.

Less than one year after the monumental achievement of securing the promise to divest from several high polluting industries and setting up appropriate investment rules, the sustainability department of the student government would be dissolved.

The reason why the sustainability department was dissolved was naturally not because we set a self-destruction button during its founding phase to destroy it once all the initial strategic targets were met. As I foreshadowed earlier, the tradition of appointing members of environmental clubs as the minister of the sustainability department created a friction between the department and the parliament as time went on. For the parliament, their main discontent was most likely that the tradition made the department “out of the student parliament’s control” as influence from environmental clubs prolonged the change of different terms of student governments and parliaments.

For presidents who wished to exert more direct control on the strategies of the department, the tradition also created a thorn in their eye as all members of the departments would usually be either handpicked or interviewed by the ministers. This would not be a problem for other departments as the president got to pick whoever they want as the ministers with no limits, but for the sustainability department they had to honor the tradition if they want to push for serious policy advocacy.

To mitigate both the internal friction within the government and the friction with the parliament, in the school year of 2019/20, there were two deputy ministers, one selected by the minister and the other selected directly by the president to assist with the department affairs. While this did not make the work of the ministers of the sustainability department that school year⁵ much easier, it also pleased the parliament little, and eventually in the next president election, the candidate (coming from the previous parliament) with a policy to dissolve the department won and pursued that policy.

The dissolution was not done without meeting any resistance. The minister of the sustainability department for autumn 2019 decided to launch a signing campaign on campus, calling for the continuation of the sustainability department in the student government. Remarkably (at least probably for observers of the more traditional student politics), the three ministers proceeding her signed the petition. While the unity and solidarity was definitely laudable, in hindsight it probably just proved to the president of the student government and some representatives in the student parliament then what they were always concerned about: that the sustainability department enjoyed a tradition too strong to be contained by any single term of government or parliament.

(Nowadays, when it is obvious that renewable expansion is no longer an official priority, and that we are entering an era of SMR and CCS hype, this last stand to keep the sustainability department alive often resurfaces in my mind. There are times when showing defiance, even just for the historical record, remains an imperative, regardless whether such defiance seems futile in the end.)

Since “we do not like people who we cannot fully control pursuing consistent agendas and policies in our student government” would definitely be a hard sell to dissolve a department that delivered tangible results, most of the official reasons student politicians stated opposing the department were rather on the principles of the student governance, basically along the lines of “the student government should be small and elegant”.

It still always baffles me why under this logic the gender and sustainability issues would become working groups under the academic department (which was the case after the first dissolution of the department), as if we were studying clubs instead of policy advocacy groups. I also entertain myself the thought sometimes that in an alternative timeline where NTU student government adopted the European model, we could have just supported or run as representatives ourselves and founded a sustainability committee under the parliament, and that would probably be more stable.

But NTU student government adopted the US model, and whether the sustainability department should be resurrected remained a hot topic even after the first dissolution in the school year of 2020/21. Due to the effort of environmental clubs and previous members, the department did resurrect in the 2021/22 school year, but it would be dissolved again in the 2023/24 school year, and remained so to this date.

Legacy and afterthoughts

In any case, the end of the sustainability department did not mean the end of student government’s involvement in campus sustainability affairs; there is still a sustainability working group now, directly under the president. And if both the student representatives and the presidents henceforth were finally satisfied with this arrangement and allowed the working group to pursue whatever sustainable policies relevant for NTU at the moment, then so be it. Although the later developments became too distant for me to keep track of to give any meaningful comment.

In the school year of 2026/27, a decade after the campaign to found the sustainability department within the student government, and six years after it was first dissolved, I think it is fair now to comment on the legacy of the department. All the achievements and works mentioned earlier, among all the achievements not mentioned done by members of the department, remain worthy to be remembered. Yet perhaps the most long-lasting legacy of the department, one that survives long after the department’s death, is this: from then on, irreversibly, discourse and personnel for sustainability issues were institutionalized, both in the student government and the university. Whatever new sustainability issues inside NTU, we will now always have someone obligated to monitor and advocate for, on behalf of the NTU students.