Fresh water is a basic necessity for human health and food production. At the same time, it is also an indispensable element maintaining the ecosystem. In view of the role of the utmost importance that water started to play in the world in recent years, the UN designated this year as the International Year of Freshwater.
Water was also the theme of this year's Taipei Ecological Conservation Week (running from last Saturday to next Sunday) activities. According to UN statistics, around one-sixth of the world's population has no stable, hygienic water supply. In developing countries, around 80 percent of all diseases are caused by unclean water and environment.
According to statistics, the world's population increased as much over the past 30 years as it did between 100,000 years ago and 1950. Because of the rapidly increasing population, humanity's demand for water has also risen drastically. On top of this, water is also needed for food production. Water shortages are a constant nightmare in many regions.
Along with advances in technology, humanity has wantonly changed river courses, built reservoirs and turned river beds, which can absorb water, into water ducts in order to meet the need for drinking water in metropolitan areas and irrigation water in rural areas. Even though these will help meet the demand for water temporarily, they also have a considerable impact on the environment and ecology in the long run. In 1997, the Yellow River, the cradle of Chinese civilization, was without water for one-third of the year.
Massive amounts of ground water have been extracted in recent decades, causing land subsidence problems. Environmental pollution causes river water quality to deteriorate. Along with "percolated" rain water, all types of pollutants infiltrate the initially clean ground water.
At the same time, due to the increasing population, continuous land development has drastically reduced forest coverage. This, combined with the excessive extraction of ground water, has led to serious desertification in many regions. The frequent sand storms of recent years are a warning sign. When land is not protected by forests, rain results in disasters and the lack of rain immediately leads to droughts. In the 1990s, three-quarters of all natural-disaster victims were victims of floods.
Due to the massive use of fossil fuels, large amounts of carbon dioxide are continuously emitted into the atmosphere, creating a global-warming effect. This phenomenon has become a widely acknowledged fact in recent years. The world's ecosystem, which had been in a balanced state for tens of millions of years, is now changing gradually. The frequency of extreme weather conditions is beginning to increase. Super typhoons and continuous flooding (or droughts) are occurring in various parts of the world.
Humanity has recklessly engaged in many large-scale water-resource projects in the last 100 years. In the long run, they appear to be self-defeating efforts. Recently developed ecological-engineering methods, which can be integrated into nature, should be the trend of future engineering.
To firmly control the volume of water distributed, Taiwan sorely needs a set of calculation standards to govern water usage for all purposes. Taiwan's per capita daily water usage is higher than that of many advanced European countries. Therefore, water conservation should also be one of the tasks to be promoted in the water resources issue. Water allocation is already running into shortages. The high leakage levels in dams and reservoirs can no longer be ignored either. Investments should be increased to reduce leakage year by year.
Lin I-chen is an associate professor in the department of water resources and environmental engineering, Tamkang University.
Translated by Francis Huang
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs