On Monday last week, a section of the Xiaoyoukeng (小油坑) Recreation Area in Yangmingshan National Park caught fire. Reports said the blaze started due to the overheating of a faulty battery in an air quality sensor belonging to the National Institutes of Applied Research’s (NIAR) Center for High-performance Computing.
With the addition of strong winds, the flames spread for five hours, engulfing 50 hectares of woodland.
The incident not only reveals a huge flaw in the management of research facilities and infrastructure, but also serves as a stark reminder of the gravity of disaster awareness needed for risk management from the extremes of global climate change.
The massive wildfires in South Korea last month are pertinent. The blaze killed scores of people and razed 1,000-year-old Buddhist temples and pagodas — national heritage monuments.
Several wildfires also hit Japan’s Iwate, Ehime and Okayama prefectures. The scope of those fires was startling and authorities in Tokyo listed the fire in Iwate’s Funabashi as an “exacerbated disaster.”
These disasters point to one overarching issue: In an era of climate change, forest fires in mountainous areas have exceeded the capabilities of those fighting them, and now touch upon systems involving risk management, environmental protection and national defense.
If forest fires become the new norm for the world, is Taiwan prepared for what comes next?
The Yangmingshan blaze sheds light on three systemic issues: First, risk assessments for research facilities’ installations are inadequate. Even though the NIAR has said it is waiting for fire assessment results, a faulty sensing device from the Civil Internet of Things Taiwan project seems to be the conflagration’s cause, reflecting a lack of considerations for disaster warnings — from site selection to maintenance.
Second, alpine firefighting teams face obvious hurdles. Taiwan has steep and precipitous terrain in many places, so disaster relief in mountainous areas remains highly reliant on people being capable of carrying equipment up mountainsides. Mechanisms to deploy firefighting helicopters are also imperfect.
The third and most critical issue is the unclear division of management in sensitive areas. As a national park, Yangmingshan seems to have unwittingly permitted potential risks for the NIAR to operate without appropriate preventive measures in a highly combustible environment. This shortsightedness reflects the serious inadequacy of coordination between managing bodies.
In the aftermath of the fire, more attention should be placed on prevention. Fires on Yangmingshan could be averted by adopting three reforms: First, the legislature should strictly enforce a system that stringently checks the accreditation of fire prevention standards and establishes a regular inspection regime.
Second, alpine firefighting brigades should be expanded and use advanced forward mission equipment, such as uncrewed aerial drones with advanced thermal imaging.
Third, a “resilient mountain forest” plan should be developed, climate change risk assessment standards should be established and potential fire sources should be identified and managed.
If large-scale fires break out here, only by bolstering cross-department cooperation and drawing lessons from international firefighting could Taiwan avoid them becoming a collective memory seared into people’s minds from the government’s dereliction and failures.
Increasing environmental resilience in the face of climate change is the right approach.
Siao Hung-jung is an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering at Tamkang University. Hu Wen-chi is the spokesman for the People First Party.
Translated by Tim Smith
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
It is being said every second day: The ongoing recall campaign in Taiwan — where citizens are trying to collect enough signatures to trigger re-elections for a number of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — is orchestrated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), or even President William Lai (賴清德) himself. The KMT makes the claim, and foreign media and analysts repeat it. However, they never show any proof — because there is not any. It is alarming how easily academics, journalists and experts toss around claims that amount to accusing a democratic government of conspiracy — without a shred of evidence. These
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international