China Steel, CPC Corp, Taiwan and other state-owned firms have been falling over themselves in their search for land to plant trees. President-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has also proposed a 60,000-hectare forestation project. These efforts all purport to reduce carbon emissions, but will they really be effective?
The effectiveness of planting trees in carbon reduction depends on several factors, including climate, soil and the species and age of the tree, and it is difficult to use a single standard for measurement. If we go by the calculations used by the Bureau of Energy, every year one hectare of Taiwan’s forests is able to absorb 20.2 tonnes of carbon. How much forest must be planted to offset the emissions of Taiwan’s large-scale industries?
Formosa Plastics Group’s (FPG) Sixth Naphtha Cracker Plant emits 67.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, which would require a 3,340,000 hectare forest to offset its effects. Offsetting carbon emissions from FPG’s planned steel refinery would require 740,000 hectares of forest. These two together would exceed Taiwan’s total area of 3.6 million hectares.
For China Steel, 1 million hectares of land would be needed to offset its annual emission of 20.4 million tonnes of carbon. This is equivalent to the total area of Kaohsiung, Pingtung, Tainan and Chiayi. Kuokuang Petrochemical would need about 350,000 hectares, about three times the size of Yunlin County, where it is located. Taipower’s Talin plant would require 880,000 hectares, larger than Kaohsiung, Pingtung and Tainan counties combined.
Ma’s 60,000-hectare forestation plan would be able to absorb 1 million tonnes of carbon emissions every year. This would not be able to offset even a tenth of the FPG steel refinery’s carbon output. China Steel has announced that it has set aside 48 hectares of land as a green zone and plans to adopt 20 hectares of forest on Tatushan. CPC Corp, Taiwan, has completed the greening of 470 hectares of land and will go on to plant 30,000 trees. Yet, given its enormous emissions, this is only a drop in the ocean and would lead one to suspect that these are just superficial public relations efforts.
In relation to the extraordinary amounts of carbon emissions generated by these heavy industries, seeking to plant enough forest to offset them all is impossible. These efforts only serve to divert focus from the root problem. The fundamental solution still lies in altering the industrial structure and curbing the development of energy-intensive and high-pollution industries. Otherwise, how could Ma achieve his goal of bringing Taiwan’s 2025 carbon emissions down to this year’s levels?
If businesses really do wish to link forest protection with carbon reduction, they would do better to assist the government in the reclamation of state and privately owned forests that have been illegally logged or over-harvested. This land could be left alone to allow its forest to recover naturally. Or they could become responsible global citizens by doing their best to protect forests in Southeast Asia and the Amazon from the terrors of illegal logging. What really matters is decreasing carbon emissions in the manufacturing process.
Individuals can also play a part in changing their lifestyles by eliminating as much as possible any unnecessary consumption. Walk more, ride a bicycle or take public transportation. Buy local goods to help reduce the carbon emissions generated by international transport.
The task of working together to cut carbon emissions is an urgent and painful one. The government and industry should avoid superficial gestures and face the roots of the problem. Only then can the goal of carbon reduction be realized.
Lee Ken-cheng is director of Mercy on the Earth, Taiwan.
Translated by James Chen/em>
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
On Sept. 3 in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) rolled out a parade of new weapons in PLA service that threaten Taiwan — some of that Taiwan is addressing with added and new military investments and some of which it cannot, having to rely on the initiative of allies like the United States. The CCP’s goal of replacing US leadership on the global stage was advanced by the military parade, but also by China hosting in Tianjin an August 31-Sept. 1 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which since 2001 has specialized
A large part of the discourse about Taiwan as a sovereign, independent nation has centered on conventions of international law and international agreements between outside powers — such as between the US, UK, Russia, the Republic of China (ROC) and Japan at the end of World War II, and between the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since recognition of the PRC as the sole representative of China at the UN. Internationally, the narrative on the PRC and Taiwan has changed considerably since the days of the first term of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic
RSS