In the 1990s, faced with the worsening problem of land subsidence in coastal areas, the Cabinet drew up a Land Subsidence Prevention and Reclamation Plan (地層下陷防治執行方案), which went into effect in November 1995.
Unfortunately, the plan has only marginally slowed down the incidence of land subsidence. Since its launch, Dacheng Township in Changhua County has sunk 1.6m, while Taisi (台西) in Yunlin County, Dongshih (東石) in Chiayi County, Hunei (湖內) in Kaohsiung County and Jiadong (佳冬) in Pingtung County have sunk 30, 40, 62 and 38cm respectively. In addition, the area affected by subsidence has spread further inland.
Half the land in Yunlin County is affected by subsidence, which may pose a threat to rail traffic safety. In addition, floods brought by Typhoon Morakot last August badly hit low-lying areas of southern Taiwan.
Because the “prevention” part of the subsidence plan has not been very effective, the government has also had to spend a great deal of money on “reclamation,” but that has also had limited impact. The main reason for the plan’s ineffectiveness is that it attempts to reduce land subsidence by limiting land-based fish farming to five zones where there are a high concentration of fishponds and the land is already sinking, rather than trying to reduce the overall area of fishponds along the coast.
Coastal land subsidence has continued unabated because most fish species raised in coastal fish farms need more than 80 percent fresh water, which is drawn from underground.
The government’s subsidence prevention and reclamation plan does nothing to regulate agriculture, which is the biggest user of underground water, drawing twice as much as aquaculture. Regarding restrictions on the use of underground water by industry, which continues to increase its volume of water consumption and is gradually becoming another contributing factor to the land subsidence problem, the plan offers guidelines, but no means of practical enforcement.
The first thing the government needs to do as a matter of urgency is to accept the need to regulate and restrict the use of underground water by agriculture and industry. In addition, the water drawn by private wells is not included in the official figures, which therefore seriously underestimate the real level of underground water usage.
Another shortcoming of the plan is that, while it attempts to cut the area devoted to fish farming, it does not offer complementary measures to provide for the livelihood of those who want to quit the business. As a result, local governments have not been able to cooperate with the central authorities’ demands that wells be sealed and people be forced out of the fish-farming business.
Research carried out by myself and colleagues indicated that the main reason people engage in fish farming is to make a living. If appropriate subsidies and retraining were available, 66.1 percent of fish farmers would consider quitting. Research by others has produced similar results.
The government needs to establish a high-level inter-ministerial task force responsible specifically for cutting the area of land used for fish farming in sinking coastal areas, to reduce land subsidence.
In order to reduce the area used for fish farming, the authorities must come up with a plan to help people quit the business rather than trying to force them out. This should include regulations on providing subsidies, training in other skills, assistance in changing profession and help finding employment for those who quit fish farming. Owners of land originally used for fish farming should sign agreements to stop using their land for that purpose and to seal off their wells.
The government would have to subsidize the work of filling in fishponds and assist in turning the land to other uses. This approach would contrast starkly with the current policy of using punitive measures to stop fish farming without seeking to change the operational environment in which it takes place. Such an attitude is impractical because people will be lured back to fish farming when the price of fish goes up.
How much funding would be required?
According to data compiled by the Fisheries Agency, last year the fish farming industry employed 70,841 people. If 40,000 of them were to quit the business (with priority given to those working in sinking coastal areas), and if each person were paid an average subsidy of NT$25,000 per month for a period of 10 years, the total funding required would be NT$120 billion (US$3.8 billion).
There is also the matter of filling in fishponds, which could be done using sediment dredged from reservoirs and riverbeds and mud deposited by flooding. Fishponds are around 1.5m deep and the total area of fishponds in sinking coastal areas is 11,597 hectares. If 10,000 hectares of fishponds were filled in and the cost of filling in one hectare is NT$4 million, then the total cost would be NT$40 billion.
The total cost of job-change subsidies plus filling in fishponds for 10 years would come to NT$160 billion, or NT$16 billion per year. Such a plan would greatly reduce coastal subsidence and allow for the proper planning of future development in areas where the land has been sinking. It would also greatly reduce the social costs brought about by land subsidence.
Research indicates that the social costs of subsidence in four coastal townships between Pingtung County and Fangliao (枋寮) in Kaohsiung County alone are somewhere between NT$27 billion and NT$101.9 billion per annum, while Taiwan’s four-year budget for water control and flood prevention is over NT$300 billion. The NT$16 billion annual budget proposed here pales in comparison, but it would have a dramatic impact.
Although making big cuts in the number of coastal fishponds would quickly bring substantial results in alleviating coastal subsidence, this measure alone would not completely solve the problem. The proposed task force would also have to push for a plan that encouraged farmers to quit agriculture, thereby cutting the area given over to farming. A monitoring system would also have to be put in place to supervise the building of industrial facilities that use a lot of water. Fisheries, agriculture and industry woud all have to learn to use water more efficiently and this task force would help them do that.
Current policies intended to reduce land subsidence, such as setting up fish-farming zones, banning freshwater fish farming, encouraging seawater fish farming, temporary stoppages in fish farming and so on, have either produced unwanted side-effects or proved difficult to put into practice. The solution proposed here is that the government sets up a high-ranking task force that would approach the land subsidence problem from the point of view of farmers and aquaculture operators.
Policies related to aquaculture and fish farming, land subsidence prevention and related land conservation and restoration issues are need to be considered as key elements in a more integrated approach. If this task is not addressed, then land subsidence in coastal areas will continue to worsen and eventually lead to disasters even worse than the deadly floods brought by Morakot.
Peter Sun is an associate professor of aquaculture at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
Let’s begin with the bottom line. The sad truth of the matter is that Beijing has trampled on its solemn pledge to grant Hong Kong a great deal of autonomy for at least fifty years. In so doing, the PRC ignored a promise Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) made to both Great Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the wider world back in the early 1980s. This was at a time when Beijing, under Deng and his successors, appeared to be seeking an equitable accommodation with the West. I remain puzzled by China’s recent policy shift. Was it because Hong Kong was perceived
French police have confirmed that China’s overseas “police service stations” were behind cyberattacks against a Taiwanese Mandarin Learning Center in the European nation. This is another example of Beijing bullying Taiwanese organizations, as well as a show of contempt for other countries’ sovereignty and for international laws and norms. L’Encrier Chinois, a Chinese-language school that opened in 2005 in Paris, became the second Taiwanese Mandarin Learning Center in France in 2021. The school was targeted by at least three cyberattacks last year, which were reported to French police, who discovered that the attacks originated from China’s overseas police stations. Overseas
A photograph taken on Tuesday of Taoyuan City Government officials bowing to an East African baboon that was fatally shot the previous day provides an absurd snapshot to a sorry farce that led to an avoidable tragedy. The photograph showed the officials in front of a plastic container draped in a purple cloth on which a bouquet of flowers had been placed. It was a perfect example of a death ritual performed for the benefit of the living, not the dead. The gesture was worthless for any other reason than to distract from personal blame and political guilt. It contrasts with
A Taichung high-school student recently committed suicide after allegedly being bullied and abused by his school’s head of student affairs, military discipline office head, and other disciplinary and security officers. The Humanistic Education Foundation accused seven staff members at the school of picking on the boy after he was found bringing beer and cigarettes on campus in his first year at the school. They allegedly started to conduct body checks and searches of his bag, vilify him in public and pressure him into admitting wrongdoings committed by other students using verbal threats. They allegedly handed him two demerits and nine