About 100 international workers and academics from more than 20 countries are attending the 10th Asia-Pacific Non-Governmental Organization’s (NGO) Environmental Conference, which opened in Taipei yesterday.
Almost 600 other participants also joined in discussions.
The conference’s inaugural meeting was in Bangkok in 1991 and it has been held every one to two years since.
It is now one of the most important international environmental forums to be held in the Asia--Pacific region.
This year, the conference is being hosted by a Taiwanese group, the Society of Wilderness, with topics such as environmental trusts, habitat conservation, high-tech pollution, green economies, environmental education, renewable energy and sustainable ecotourism up for discussion.
Ando Toshiko, a professor at Japan’s Saitama University and president of the Totoro Foundation, was invited to talk about his experiences establishing an environmental trust at Sayama Hills in metropolitan Tokyo.
Also invited was Ted Smith, coordinator of the International Campaign for Responsible Technology in the US, to discuss environmental and occupational health challenges in the global electronics industry.
During the opening ceremony, Asia-Pacific Environmental Council chairperson Isono Yayoi said the conference gave NGOs from different countries the opportunity to cooperate, but “there are still problems to be solved, such as serious water pollution, the shift to renewable energy and the need for an international framework to enhance environmental governance in Asia-Pacific countries.”
Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) Minister Stephen Shen (沈世宏) said “the environmental NGOs are probably the most active NGOs in Taiwan, of which there are more than 500. They not only draw attention to environmental issues and increase the public’s environmental awareness, but they also put pressure on the EPA and local environmental bureaus, and these pressures are certainly one of the major driving forces behind Taiwan’s environmental protections.”
New Public Construction Commission Minister Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源) talked about ways to deal with global climate change.
“Global climate change is not a simple problem with a simple answer, so a strategy for dealing with climate change through sustainable development needs good science, clear policies and good communication,” Lee said
He added that public awareness and public engagement were very important.
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
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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