What is CIDS?
The Center for Innovation, Democracy, and Sustainability (CIDS) is a Taipei-based organization dedicated to facilitating social communication around socio-technical controversies. Through long-term engagement with Taiwan's environmental issues, such as nuclear waste siting, geothermal energy development, and the petrochemical transition,CIDS has developed democratic infrastructures.
By integrating Science and Technology Studies (STS), participatory design, and community engagement, CIDS creates spaces where diverse actors can collectively interrogate controversies and envision alternative governance pathways, such as diverse energy choices. We start with "issues," engaging in dialogue and collaboration to bridge knowledge gaps, facilitate cooperation, and ultimately improve governance.
Main problem and purpose
When dealing with the siting of high-risk facilities like nuclear waste repositories, the challenge extends far beyond technical assessments. These decisions are shaped by competing values: supporters versus opponents, Indigenous communities, and debates over compensation, stigma, intergenerational responsibility, and the ethics of risk distribution.
In Taiwan, traditional methods like public hearings often fail due to the mistrust. In order to address these challenges, CIDS employs a multifaceted approach to understand context, power relations, histories, emotions, and lived experiences. We act as knowledge brokers across trans-disciplinary experts, administrative boundaries, connecting central and local governments, communities, NGOs, and international scholars.
Democratic Empowerment through active participation
CIDS views the participatory empowerment of democracy as an active, dynamic process that takes place everywhere. We achieve this through three primary layers:
Inform to Empower
Transitions do not happen in a vacuum; they are embedded in contexts, such as politics, and local histories. CIDS illuminates complex issues by systematically mapping context, translating knowledge, and presenting diverse perspectives.
- Knowledge Translation: We convert scattered, compounded information into accessible formats. For example, the Kaohsiung Story Maps break down the city's long-standing petrochemical transition using timelines and interactive maps.
- Global Relevance: By sketching how industrial cities form and how environmental injustices accumulate, we digitize local stories into open learning materials, turning cases like Kaohsiung into globally relevant studies.
Resonate by Perspective-Taking
To foster empathy and deeper understanding, CIDS utilizes immersive, scenario-based activities.
- Negotiation Theater: Adapted from French sociologist Bruno Latour, this simulated theatrical scenario creates immersive real-world settings.
- Role-Playing: Participants take on roles of various stakeholders, including non-human entities like spent Fuel rods or affected land to challenge human-centric viewpoints and experience the competing pressures of policy, finance, and social environments.
Reflect to React
After experiencing decision-making through role-play and feeling the associated conflict, frustration, participants reflect on how siting processes are designed. For instance, in our nuclear waste siting workshops, we invite real stakeholders to watch student performances and offer feedback. This iterative process helps participants see policy not as a top-down mandate, but as something they can actively shape, triggering genuine care and mobilization.
Specializations, Methods, and Tools
CIDS primarily uses qualitative research methods—interviews, fieldwork, and focus groups to trace processes rather than just outcomes. To combat miscommunication, we have developed participatory tools designed to build trust and resonate with policy contexts.
Travel Camp
We move beyond the classroom and into the field, situating people directly within the actual landscape of risk. Through immersive, place-based pedagogy, such as fieldwork in Kaohsiung’s petrochemical districts,we bring local stakeholders, students, and international scholars together. These community walk-throughs allow participants to observe firsthand how industrial zones and residential lives intertwine, mapping out localized perceptions.
Issue toolbox
To address the highly technical and scattered nature of socio-technical controversies, we prioritize knowledge translation. The Issue Toolbox is a collection of catalytic materials that consolidate complex data into accessible, one-stop resources. This includes visualized websites, interactive story maps, and personas. By transforming fragmented information into guided readings and clear visual tools, we empower the public to easily comprehend deeply entrenched issues.
Negotiation theater
Inspired by French sociologist Bruno Latour, this immersive, scenario-based simulation is designed to break administrative and social deadlocks. Participants step into highly realistic settings and take on the roles of diverse stakeholders, including non-human roles to deeply challenge human-centric viewpoints. By navigating competing pressures via policy, finance, and social environment cards, participants experience the dilemmas of others, fostering empathy and opening new pathways for co-creation.
Vision: Finding Taiwan's Democratic DNA
In short, our work focuses on developing the democratic infrastructure necessary for participatory governance. Contemporary communication spaces must not be depoliticized traps for backroom bargaining; rather, should they citizens be actively engaged with public institutions.
Professor Wen-Ling Tu guides this mission, shaping the theoretical and strategic frameworks of our participatory methods and leading the on-the-ground execution and cross-sector collaborations. Together with the CIDS team, we are committed to fostering an ecosystem that supports democratic innovation.
CIDS is dedicated to cultivating fertile ground for democratic experimentation. By having our methods compiled into a forthcoming book, it is expected that more innovative ideas and investments will be cultivated, innovative democracy will be scaled up, and a democratic DNA that uniquely belongs to Taiwan will be found.
