As an island nation proud of its Austronesian heritage, Taiwan has a very special relationship with the ocean. Consequently, the problem of coastal debris pollution caused by humans is a particularly pertinent issue to the public.
The fifth annual Taiwan National Clean Up Day, held on Saturday last week at 16 locations across the nation, served as a testimony to the importance of ocean protection to residents of Taiwan from different walks of life. While beach cleanups are useful tools for raising community awareness, it is important to think about ocean waste in the broader context of Taiwan’s geopolitical circumstances.
Many civil society groups in Taiwan, including the Society of Wilderness, RE-THINK and the Taiwan NextGen Foundation, mobilize the public through their coastal cleanup activities in an effort to educate people about marine pollution and the impacts of individual actions. In my own experience, a large proportion of plastic waste collected during those events comes from China — with many of the objects featuring simplified Chinese script. While the issue of plastic waste mismanagement is certainly present in Taiwan, pollution is a cross-national, and thus highly political, issue.
This anecdotal evidence is also reflected in academic work on marine pollution. A 2017 study by Christian Schmidt of the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research and his colleagues showed that about 90 percent of single-use plastic that pollutes the world’s oceans comes from 10 rivers, six of which are in China. Moreover, Global Change Data Lab reports that China contributes the highest share of mismanaged plastic waste, at about 28 percent of the global total.
In January last year, Beijing unveiled new rules to curb plastic pollution, but the measures target major cities, leaving the problem of an urban-rural divide in waste management unchecked. About 40 percent of China’s population lives in rural areas and generates more than 280 million tonnes of waste a year. By perpetuating the mismanagement of its waste, China not only fails to act as a responsible global stakeholder, but also creates tangible threats to human security. Marine pollution, and the proliferation of microplastics and nanoplastics in particular, can destabilize food chains, lead to internal injuries and serve as new pathogen vectors.
While recognizing these challenges, China is no stranger to deploying environmental statecraft while simultaneously disregarding any negative externalities its geoengineering ventures bring about in other countries. Examples thereof include illegal sand dredging off the Matsu Islands and the Formosa Banks; the launch of the Tianhe weather modification project, which threatens the Indian summer monsoon rainfall; and erratic dam management in southern China, which has led to wet-season droughts in the lower Mekong Basin.
During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan internalized the popular adage, “a crisis is also an opportunity for change,” and successfully sought to expand its international space by actively sharing the “Taiwan model.” The spread of COVID-19 constitutes a pressing non-traditional security threat of amorphous, elusive nature. However, it is anything but the only pressing challenge to human security — climate crisis and environmental pollution act as “threat multipliers” and add to existing security burdens.
Taiwan should capitalize on its momentum to expand its international space. Its achievements in combating a major human security challenge, amplified globally through the #TaiwanCanHelp campaign, have proven a useful tool in circumventing its international isolation imposed by an increasingly aggressive Beijing. To fully demonstrate its ability to contribute to the global community as a responsible stakeholder, Taiwan should also seek to showcase its leadership and responsibility in other areas of global concern, including environmental protection.
If Taiwan wants to let the world know that it can help in other realms as well, there is a need for coordinated action at domestic and international level.
On the one hand, it is imperative that plastic pollution is curbed domestically, which can be achieved by enhancing standards for waste monitoring across the nation, encouraging the public to cut down their consumption of single-use plastics, and implementing stricter standards for reducing plastic in fishing and aquaculture.
On the other hand, now is the right time for Taiwan to enhance its international partnerships aimed at fostering an equitable, inclusive and progressive framework for managing environmental concerns in the region and beyond. Encouragingly, the New Southbound Policy — President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) flagship foreign policy instrument — has facilitated closer cooperation between Taiwan and like-minded partners across the Indo-Pacific region. In this regard, Vietnam stands out as a success story, with two bilateral environmental collaboration agreements signed by Taipei and Hanoi.
The political map of the world is imaginary and arbitrary. Pollution does not respect socially constructed boundaries, which means that environmental challenges produce negative externalities that span national borders. Environmental degradation in China takes its toll on Taiwan and other stakeholders in the region. It is important for Taiwan to offer an alternative “Taiwan model” for environmental governance and contributing to global solutions against environmental pollution, and the proliferation of microplastics and nanoplastics in particular. As a democracy, it needs to address the pathologies in its institutional structures which, quite literally, pollute its environment.
Chen Kuan-ting is chief executive officer of the Taiwan Nextgen Foundation and a former staff member at the National Security Council.
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