The waters that surround Taiwan and the nation’s role in the world’s oceans have been the focus of top-level attention this year, as the government has endeavored for the EU to lift its yellow card on the deep-waters fishery industry and to win passage of the Ocean Basic Act (海洋基本法).
The EU on June 27 removed Taiwan from its list of uncooperative nations in the fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, while the Legislative Yuan passed the act on Friday last week.
The act is intended to ensure Taiwan sustainably uses the sea and its resources, and facilitates collaboration on international marine affairs by educating the public about the oceans, building a high value-added marine industry, promoting environmental friendly measures and engaging in international maritime exchanges.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and other officials this week talked up marine education, recreation and protection. Tsai spoke about encouraging the public to learn more about the oceans and develop an interest in fishing, while Su said that Taiwan as an ocean nation needs to pay tribute to the sea.
Even before the act was passed, the Executive Yuan was planning a more vigorous approach in cleaning the nation’s coastline by charging eight agencies overseen by the Environmental Protection Administration with removing garbage, discarded fishing gear and driftwood.
However, as with much of the nation’s legislation, the devil is in the details, and when it comes to the Ocean Basic Act, much remains unknown.
Under the act, the Executive Yuan must produce a white paper setting out the government’s approach to ocean affairs within a year and establish a marine development fund.
If the government is serious about protecting the world’s oceans, and not just with promoting recreational fishing and the deep-waters fishing industry, it should review the report issued on Thursday by Greenpeace International, titled Ghost Gear: The Abandoned Fishing Nets Haunting Our Oceans.
Citing a 2009 UN Food and Agricultural Organization report and a 2014 study published on PLOS One, Greenpeace said an estimated 640,000 tonnes of fishing industry gear is lost or abandoned in the oceans annually, including nets, packing containers and buoys, accounting for 10 percent of the plastic waste in the oceans. By weight alone, as much as 70 percent of the microplastics on the surface of the oceans comes from fishing activities, with more than half from discarded buoys, it added.
Not only is ghost gear deadly to marine life, it is a hazard to ship navigation, the report said. Greenpeace is urging governments to take three actions: agreeing by next spring on a “Global Ocean Treaty” to provide protection for marine life in international waters; adopting the solutions and best-practice protocols suggested by the Global Ghost Gear Initiative; and taking steps to address marine pollution through regional and international organizations.
As Taiwan is not a UN member, it cannot sign the proposed Global Ocean Treaty, but it certainly can follow through on the second and third recommendations.
Taiwan operates one of the world’s largest fleets of deep-sea fishing vessels, if not the largest. It is a major player in the global seafood industry and a member of several regional fisheries management organizations.
If the nation takes action on ghost gear, it could have a major impact on the problem and the fishery industry.
A week ago today, the government declared that starting next year, Taiwan would join with other nations around the world in recognizing June 8 as World Oceans Day.
It would be great if by that day, the government could announce that it is committed to eliminating the threat that ghost gear poses to marine, human and other life.
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
When it became clear that the world was entering a new era with a radical change in the US’ global stance in US President Donald Trump’s second term, many in Taiwan were concerned about what this meant for the nation’s defense against China. Instability and disruption are dangerous. Chaos introduces unknowns. There was a sense that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) might have a point with its tendency not to trust the US. The world order is certainly changing, but concerns about the implications for Taiwan of this disruption left many blind to how the same forces might also weaken
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
On today’s page, Masahiro Matsumura, a professor of international politics and national security at St Andrew’s University in Osaka, questions the viability and advisability of the government’s proposed “T-Dome” missile defense system. Matsumura writes that Taiwan’s military budget would be better allocated elsewhere, and cautions against the temptation to allow politics to trump strategic sense. What he does not do is question whether Taiwan needs to increase its defense capabilities. “Given the accelerating pace of Beijing’s military buildup and political coercion ... [Taiwan] cannot afford inaction,” he writes. A rational, robust debate over the specifics, not the scale or the necessity,
RSS