In his latest endeavor to help Tuvalu’s fight against climate change, Taiwanese artist Vincent J.F. Huang (黃瑞芳) has launched a crowdfunding project to fund the planting of mangrove trees to protect the coastline of the Pacific island nation.
Under the project that commenced last week, Huang said he hopes to plant about 7,000 trees on Tuvalu’s coastline in the form of a giant QR code.
People who scan the QR code would be connected to information about global climate change and rising sea levels that are threatening Tuvalu’s very existence, he said.
“By planting mangroves, we aim to slow down coastal erosion amid the threat of rising sea levels,” Huang said.
The idea came from German artist Joseph Beuys’ project in 1982 aimed at planting 7,000 oak trees in the German city of Kassel to promote green urban renewal, he said.
The crowdfunding campaign, in which Huang is soliciting donations of US$10, is to last until early next month, and Huang is scheduled to depart for Tuvalu on Aug. 21 with his team to plant mangroves on the coast of Funafala, one of Tuvalu’s nine islets.
He plans to use 7,000 mangrove trees to form the QR code shape over an area of 900m2 on the islet, which is inhabited by only five families, Huang said.
He said he also hopes to use the project to draw more attention to Tuvalu, which is one of Taiwan’s 22 diplomatic allies around the world, but is still unfamiliar to many Taiwanese.
Low-lying Tuvalu is projected to be one of the first countries in the world that will be submerged by the rising sea level.
“Once Tuvalu is submerged, many of the islands around the world will soon face the same crisis,” he said.
His project is being supported by Taipei 101 management and National Taiwan Normal University’s Graduate Institute of Environmental Education, as well as the Tuvaluan government.
Tuvaluan Ambassador to Taiwan Minute Taupo said he would help extend the project to other Pacific island countries facing the same crisis as Tuvalu, including Kiribati, Nauru, the Solomon Islands and the Marshall Islands, according to Huang.
Concerned about the peril of rising sea levels faced by Tuvalu, Huang visited the country in 2010 and 2012, setting up art installations to draw attention to the crisis.
He has since cooperated with Tuvalu on many projects in a continuous effort to call attention to the looming crisis.
In 2013, Huang was commissioned to organize the Tuvaluan pavilion at the Venice Biennale, as the country prepared to participate in the major international art exhibition for the first time.
Prior to that, Huang worked closely with Tuvalu during its participation in an exhibition that was held in conjunction with the UN Climate Change Conference in Qatar in late 2012.
His Animal Delegates, depicting creatures such as penguins and turtles that are likely to be the first victims of global warming, highlighted the environmental crisis in Tuvalu.
People who hope to make a donation to support the project can visit the site www.indiegogo.com/projects/art-mangroves-project-in-tuvalu#/.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS