This year the world has witnessed the highest global temperatures since records began. All eyes were firmly fixed on Paris last weekend, as world leaders came together to attend the COP21 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. There, they debated contentious issues such as carbon reduction and subsidies to developing countries, eventually arriving at a major agreement.
In Taiwan, where the campaign for next month’s presidential and legislative elections is heating up, the respective presidential and vice presidential candidates are preoccupied with throwing insults back and forth, and have paid precious little attention to the Paris agreement.
How much is Taiwan likely to be affected by climate change? Studies suggest that increasing amounts of carbon dioxide emissions are causing global temperatures to rise, resulting in a rise in global sea levels and extreme weather events.
Some experts have said that while sea levels are rising, advanced economies around the world have sufficient engineering technologies and financial resources to increase sea defenses and install pumps, so that their cities, at least, are unlikely to be immersed under the oceans anytime soon. The real danger, then, is from extreme weather events.
On Aug. 7, 2009, Typhoon Morakot made landfall in Taiwan, and the typhoon, in conjunction with a southwesterly front, brought unprecedented levels of rainfall to the southern, central and eastern areas of the nation. The turmoil wreaked by this event led to 673 confirmed deaths and another 26 people missing, with 1,700 houses destroyed and NT$19.5 billion (US$590 million) worth of agricultural losses.
On the evening of the second day, Aug. 8, 2009, there was a huge landslide at Mount Siandu (獻肚山), northeast of Kaohsiung, that buried 462 residents of Siaolin Village (小林) — two-thirds of the total number of people killed by storm.
As weather events become more destructive, the cost of post-disaster reconstruction increases to the extent that this is becoming a contentious issue. For example, members of Aboriginal communities, such as that in Kaohsiung’s Namasiya District (那瑪夏), lost their agricultural livelihoods and this caused internal divisions within the community. The government’s reconstruction efforts have also come under heavy criticism, further damaging President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) reputation. The lessons of Typhoon Morakot tell us that money is no defense against natural disasters and that future post-disaster reconstruction efforts are likely to be met with even more serious criticism.
Due to the efforts of Beijing, Taiwan was marginalized at the COP21 negotiations, with the result that Taiwan made no commitments to improving the global climate change situation. Taiwan is already high up in the rankings in terms of global carbon emissions per capita. According to this year’s global climate change performance index rankings announced by the environmental group Germanwatch, Taiwan — or, as they call the nation, “Chinese Taipei” — is ranked 52nd out of a total of 58 countries, giving it a rating of “very poor.” This puts Taiwan below China.
Now that the Paris agreement has been signed, international cooperation on carbon emission reduction and disaster prevention is going to become increasingly important, and this would have implications for the nation in terms of the environment, disaster prevention, the energy sector and international relations.
It is about time the presidential candidates came clean about their policies on this issue, as it is their responsibility to the electorate.
Lin Thung-hong is an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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