According to media reports, parts of Taiwan will face water shortages around the end of the year and people in southern areas are being advised not to go their home towns for Lunar New Year celebrations. But wait — didn’t Typhoon Morakot bring the worst flooding in decades to southern Taiwan just a few months ago? Now climate change is even stopping people from visiting their families at festival time. Being from the south myself, I am rather upset about this.
Because of Taiwan’s unstable environment, it often suffers water shortages despite abundant rainfall. Unfortunately, the country’s industrial development has followed a path of high water and energy use. The Hsinchu Science Park is a good example. Manufacturing has flourished here, bringing a wave of prosperity over the past couple of decades. The downside is that the area’s key semiconductor and optoelectronic panel factories have used up a great deal of Taiwan’s resources — especially water resources. The Water Resources Agency (WRA) is reportedly planning to construct a reservoir in Bilin Valley in Hsinchu County’s Jianshih Township (尖石) aimed at ensuring adequate water supplies for people living and working in Hsinchu for the next 120 years.
But everyone in Hsinchu knows that once the rain stops the water quickly drains away. In order to supply the proposed Bilin reservoir with enough water, the WRA proposes digging a tunnel to bring it underground from the Dahan River on the other side of Jianshih Mountain. Chiayi County’s Zengwun Reservoir is also fed by cross-watershed transfer, but it has had a big impact on the geology, rivers, landscape and ecology of the region. People are asking whether a reservoir and water transfer tunnel at Bilin will not do the same kind of damage.
Building a reservoir sacrifices more than just the area that is flooded. It can also wipe out local culture and be disastrous for places downstream. Besides, Hsinchu was struck by a big earthquake in 1935. Following the Typhoon Morakot flooding, who can have confidence that the dam will really stand for 100 years, the accepted minimum lifetime for civil engineering projects?
Although we are short of water, there are other, safer solutions available, such as building desalination plants to process seawater.
The storage capacity of existing reservoirs could be increased by 30 percent just by dredging them. By putting into practice existing water conservation policies, recycling waste water from industrial zones and cutting water leakage from today’s 30 percent to the less than 5 percent that is normal in developed countries, enough water could be saved each year to fill three reservoirs the size of Taipei County’s Feitsui Reservoir, or about 20 times the volume of the proposed Bilin reservoir.
The industries that dominate Taiwan’s science parks bring in low profits but use up a lot of natural resources. In estimating the cost of planned science and industrial parks, the government completely failed to take environmental costs into account. It is unacceptable that Taiwan’s water conservation planning should be based on such outmoded ideas.
If the government is serious about promoting sustainable industry, it must limit development to what the land and environment can provide. Consumption and pollution should be cut by a certain percentage each year, after which we will be in a position to plan the overall direction for industrial development over the following two or three decades. Manufacturing in Taiwan needs a structural shift away from resource-hungry industries to those based on human talent, and there is no better time than the present.
Tang Mau-tsu is head of the Experimental Facility Division at the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
China has not been a top-tier issue for much of the second Trump administration. Instead, Trump has focused considerable energy on Ukraine, Israel, Iran, and defending America’s borders. At home, Trump has been busy passing an overhaul to America’s tax system, deporting unlawful immigrants, and targeting his political enemies. More recently, he has been consumed by the fallout of a political scandal involving his past relationship with a disgraced sex offender. When the administration has focused on China, there has not been a consistent throughline in its approach or its public statements. This lack of overarching narrative likely reflects a combination
US President Donald Trump’s alleged request that Taiwanese President William Lai (賴清德) not stop in New York while traveling to three of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, after his administration also rescheduled a visit to Washington by the minister of national defense, sets an unwise precedent and risks locking the US into a trajectory of either direct conflict with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or capitulation to it over Taiwan. Taiwanese authorities have said that no plans to request a stopover in the US had been submitted to Washington, but Trump shared a direct call with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平)
Heavy rains over the past week have overwhelmed southern and central Taiwan, with flooding, landslides, road closures, damage to property and the evacuations of thousands of people. Schools and offices were closed in some areas due to the deluge throughout the week. The heavy downpours brought by the southwest monsoon are a second blow to a region still recovering from last month’s Typhoon Danas. Strong winds and significant rain from the storm inflicted more than NT$2.6 billion (US$86.6 million) in agricultural losses, and damaged more than 23,000 roofs and a record high of nearly 2,500 utility poles, causing power outages. As
The greatest pressure Taiwan has faced in negotiations stems from its continuously growing trade surplus with the US. Taiwan’s trade surplus with the US reached an unprecedented high last year, surging by 54.6 percent from the previous year and placing it among the top six countries with which the US has a trade deficit. The figures became Washington’s primary reason for adopting its firm stance and demanding substantial concessions from Taipei, which put Taiwan at somewhat of a disadvantage at the negotiating table. Taiwan’s most crucial bargaining chip is undoubtedly its key position in the global semiconductor supply chain, which led
RSS