Having recently received a joint petition from 17 counties and cities around Taiwan, Examination Yuan President John Kuan (關中) expressed concern that the creation of the five special municipalities had actually resulted in uneven resource allocation and caused a brain drain away from other areas, widening the gap between smaller counties and cities and the major metropolitan sprawls that have been upgraded to municipalities.
Kuan’s concern is welcome, but hopefully something will also be done about it. The government needs to come up with an effective way to introduce a higher degree of balance.
Ironically, as Kuan was making his comments, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) was announcing the names of the four cities selected to become “low-carbon model cities” in northern, southern, central and eastern Taiwan.
With the exception of the east — where Yilan County, in the absence of a special municipality in that area, was chosen — all of the winning cities were special municipalities: in the north, New Taipei City (新北市); in the south, Greater Tainan, and Greater Taichung in the center. Meanwhile, non-municipality urban areas have once again been marginalized.
This low-carbon city contest originates from a resolution made at the 2009 Global Energy Summit in which four locations were to be selected as low-carbon cities that would gradually expand into low-carbon zones. As part of the scheme, the government is to invest massive sums of money into transportation, construction and energy policy in these cities. The hope is that the four cities will become models for other urban areas to emulate.
However, many share Kuan’s concerns and see the failure to include a county or city in the west of Taiwan as a lost opportunity to address the widening gap between the five municipalities and the rest of the country. In fact, it is more complex than simply addressing this gap.
When the municipalities were formed, the original urban and rural townships became city “districts” and the process has created all sorts of teething problems as the respective areas try to get accustomed to their new administrative garments. The new mayors of these upgraded entities did, however, have considerable leeway in terms of the allocation of personnel and financial resources, enabling them to balance the gap between the former urban and rural townships. The central government needs to look again at the imbalance between the municipalities and other areas.
Low-carbon cities serve as an example of the problem. These are supposed to be some kind of bellwether for other towns and cities to follow, an exemplar of what can be achieved. When these towns and cities witness the concentration of resources in these municipalities, they will be impressed and envious in equal measure, and therefore want to find out how they can get a slice of the pie. The trouble is, they will not be able to for the simple reason that they will lack the human and financial resources necessary.
If we are to control emissions we clearly need to look at those produced by industry. These aside, the most important areas to look at are construction and transportation. Consequently, our efforts should be concentrated on the creation of low-emission road networks and low-emission vehicles in these metropolitan areas. Nevertheless, the costs of implementing these measures compared with the actual emission reduction yields tends to be proportionately high, particularly in these metropolises. This only strengthens the case for choosing non-municipality counties and cities as low-carbon models.
The notion of energy conservation and carbon-emissions reduction is little more than striking a balance between the demands we make as we pursue our lives and the ability of nature to meet those demands. Therefore, we must temper our exploitation of oil and gas so that we do not release excessive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
For a long time, we have allowed our greed to make too many demands on nature and in so doing we have thrown the ecology out of balance, which has contributed to the unusual weather we have been witnessing. Great floods or droughts that would in the past have been seen only once in a century are now upon us every few years. Taiwan is an island nation and so it is important that we achieve balance. Food production and water supply should meet the needs of the municipalities and other areas equally, as they are all part of the same network. The municipalities will not prosper without the support of the counties and cities.
Nevertheless, there is much optimism that once New Taipei City, Greater Taichung and Greater Tainan have become established low-carbon cities, the whole world will be watching north, central and southern Taiwan. Yet, however beautiful a flower might be, it is nothing without its leaves and stem.
Energy conservation and carbon-emissions reduction is a matter for the whole population. There cannot be one county commissioner or city mayor who is not placing these issues right at the heart of governance and working hard on these issues within the context of the industries and environmental conditions in their part of the country.
In Pingtung County, for example, there are plans in place to conserve water and create sustainable energy — including the recycling of methane gas as a by-product of pig husbandry — and, to take advantage of the generous amounts of sunlight the region receives, the county is installing solar-powered generators in its elementary and junior-high schools. Hsinchu, too, is making use of its high-tech industry and promoting itself as a high-tech, low-carbon city with its citywide electric car network.
The central government should be encouraging every city and county-level government in the country, not just the five municipalities, to exploit local strengths and resources to implement the environmental measures that play best to those strengths.
With everyone working together to promote carbon emissions reduction and energy conservation, we can achieve a balanced and diverse environmentally friendly land in which to live.
Chen Wen-ching is a researcher at the Environment and Development Foundation.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
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