Taiwan gave the international community a lesson in tackling urban flooding yesterday as more than 170 countries gathered at the 3rd World Water Forum in the Japanese city of Kyoto.
The Water Resources Agency (WRA) presented three reports on flood mitigation in urban areas at the triennial international meeting, offering valuable suggestions taken from past experience.
WRA Director Hwang Jing-san (黃金山), leader of Taiwan's 30-strong delegation to the forum, said the flood mitigation strategy in Taipei deserved to be heard by a wider audience because it has been adopted by a national capital.
Lee Hong-yuan (
Lee said those strategies included building detention ponds (small dam created to hold back an excessive amount of rain fall in a short period of time), revising land-use regulations and establishing a sound flood-insurance system.
Lee said that Taipei has been victim to a series of floods since 1997. Lee said, however,that Typhoon Nari in 2001 exposed the country's shortcomings in flood prevention.
"We would like to share our know-how on flood-warning systems, but also hopefully learn about non-engineering strategies from others," Lee said.
Lee Tim-hau (
"We believe that a transnational collaborative mechanism on rainfall precipitation is needed not only by Taiwan but also the Philippines and Vietnam," Lee said.
The WRA's presentation interested participants, especially those from nations with similar environmental problems to Taiwan.
F. L. Bussink from the Netherlands' Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, said in his country people were told to believe in engineering. Bussink added, however, that recent urban flooding in his country demonstrates that engineering is not a cure-all.
Bussink stressed the importance of reshaping old-fashioned engineering concepts and educating the public.
"All measures need political support. However, the government should tell people the truth," Bussink said.
DPP lawmaker Eugene Jao (趙永清), who attended the forum in Kyoto yesterday, said that Taiwan's active participation in the forum demonstrates the country's ambition to keep up with sustainable-development issues.
Hwang said that Taiwan is facing the same water challenges as others, such as increased flooding, water-supply shortages, ongoing development, worsening urbanization, over pumping of ground water and increased costs of maintaining water sources.
Hwang said, however, that participation in the forum was a good chance for Taiwan to review the problems that are unique to the country.
"For example, how could the sewer system in an industrialized country like Taiwan be so poor?" Hwang said.
In 2000, according to government statistics, the average sewer connection ratio in Taiwan was only 7.2 percent. Even in the Taipei metropolitan area, the ratio was only 48.
In Kaohsiung, the nation's second largest city, the ratio is 7.2 percent. In the rest of the country, the ratio is 0.6 percent.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching