Policies promoting economic growth need to be revised to be in accord with global trends in sustainable development, leaders of non-governmental organizations (NGO) said yesterday.
At the 2004 National Conference for NGOs held yesterday in Taipei to mark Earth Day, President Chen Shui-bian (
Taking energy as an example, Chen said the government had established a legal basis removing obstacles to balancing energy supply with the promotion of renewable energy.
"The newly passed Basic Environment Law (
However, Chen Yueh-fong (陳玉峰), an ecologist who won last year's Presidential Cultural Award, said in his keynote speech that the government's efforts left much room for improvement.
"The Democratic Progressive Party government has promoted far too many development projects over the last four years," he said.
"We are consuming resources which should have been left to future generations," he said.
Chen Yueh-fong, who is also president of the Taiwan Academy of Ecology, said the amount of resources that Taiwan squanders would eventually require a land mass of at least 20 to 50 times that of the nation's territory.
"Economic development policies need to be heavily revised," he said.
Representatives of NGOs yesterday discussed several topics, including clean sources of energy, ecological preservation, green industries and public participation in decision-making processes.
Cheng Hsien-yu (鄭先祐), convenor of the NoNuke Taiwan Union, said that the basic principles of NGO activists stressed the right to a clean environment.
But outside the NGO Building, near the legislature, where the conference was being held, activists from the Taiwan-based Society of Wilderness and the Peitou Residents' Association protested against government plans to develop an expensive cable-car network for ecological tourism.
The activists said that this year, the government was scheduled to complete plans for at least 10 of what they said were "monstrous" cable-car projects in remote mountainous areas.
"We only see the destruction of precious ecological systems, not their protection," Society of Wilderness activist Lin Thung-hong (
Lin said similar "terrible things" could be observed in projects calling for the construction of pathways through ecologically sensitive areas around Taiwan.
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