Minister of the Interior Lee Hung-yuan (李鴻源) yesterday said the government needs to change the way it operates in terms of facing the challenge of global warming and improving the environment.
Lee outlined his key points during a speech at the first National Climate Change Summit in Taipei, where he stressed that infrastructural development is the most important solution, rather than governance and legislative action.
Addressing climate change and the impact it is having on the environment, Lee said the core issue should be on the general direction that is taken rather than getting caught up in the details.
Taiwan is a small nation with a relatively young geological environment, he said, and it is vulnerable to climate change. A balance should be found in developments which ensure relative safety, he said, adding that national land planning is the most effective solution.
The government has spent NT$400 billion (US$13.34 billion) on restoration projects since Typhoon Morakot in 2009, but roads are being rebuilt and destroyed repeatedly, Lee said, and the pattern is likely to continue if the concepts of governance and social values do not change.
Lee said problems should be considered on a grander scale, such as asking whether Greater Taipei’s environment can actually support a population of 8 million people, rather than focusing on house prices or asking how many science parks the nation needs. He also said that farmers need to be consulted.
“The problem lies within the operational method of the government ... because the authority to resolve issues often spans many different governmental agencies,” he said.
Lee said an example of ineffective environmental improvement planning was a project to tackle land subsidence in Chiayi County. Negotiations between agencies were not successful and some regulations contradicted each other.
“Integration, coherence and governance” was how the government should solve climate change challenges, Lee said.
The Ministry of the Interior is now working on revising regulations on urban planning and urban renewal, and hopefully a re-evaluated national land act would be passed during the next legislative session, he added.
There were several questions following his speech, including a representative from a private firm who suggested that the government should encourage creative input from the private sector to find solutions.
A representative from an environmental protection group urged the government to pass a national land act to prevent fast-growing developments that are rapidly destroying vulnerable coastal wetland areas.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods