The Forestry Bureau is to host the 2024 World Bamboo Congress in Taoyuan, after the event was postponed and then canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Forestry Bureau said yesterday.
The nation’s bid to host the conference is part of the bureau’s bamboo industry revival program that is being implemented from this year to 2025, bureau Director Lin Hua-ching (林華慶) told an industry forum in Taipei.
The bureau expects more than 30 countries to participate in the conference, which focuses on market matters, he said.
Photo courtesy of the Forestry Bureau
The revival program aims to boost supply and reinvigorate bamboo plantations to create a stable foundation for growth, he said, adding that high-efficiency manufacturing equipment would also be acquired.
Under the plan, the government would resume a policy of directly controlling select plantations, while introducing measures to improve managerial efficiency at state and privately owned bamboo forests, he said.
The program is to expand logistics and stockpiles to ensure stability in the supply of raw materials and the integration of the industry chain between supply and sales, he said.
The efforts include building storage facilities in Taoyuan’s Fusing Township (復興), Nantou County’s Jhushan Township (竹山), Tainan’s Longci District (龍崎) and Hualien County’s Fuli Township (富里), and creating an information platform to cater to the industry’s needs, he said.
Bamboo forests are powerful carbon sinks, and the bureau’s plans would create the capability to remove 101,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the environment by 2025 and 610,000 tonnes by 2040, it said.
Taiwan used to harvest 2 million bamboo trees per year before costs soared in 2016, which brought annual production volumes to between 500,000 and 700,000 trees, the bureau said.
Plummeting production has led to a trade imbalance in the industry, with imported bamboo outstripping domestically grown trees, it said.
The bureau said it plans to clear unusable or dead bamboo from 5,000 hectares and introduce labor-saving equipment that would increase production efficiency by 30 percent and reduce transportation costs by 20 percent.
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
Two Taiwanese prosecutors were questioned by Chinese security personnel at their hotel during a trip to China’s Henan Province this month, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. The officers had personal information on the prosecutors, including “when they were assigned to their posts, their work locations and job titles,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said. On top of asking about their agencies and positions, the officers also questioned the prosecutors about the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement, a pact that serves as the framework for Taiwan-China cooperation on combating crime and providing judicial assistance, Liang
A group from the Taiwanese Designers in Australia association yesterday represented Taiwan at the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne. The march, held in the St. Kilda suburb, is the city’s largest LGBTQIA+ parade and the flagship event of the annual Midsumma Festival. It attracted more than 45,000 spectators who supported the 400 groups and 10,000 marchers that participated this year, the association said. Taiwanese Designers said they organized a team to march for Taiwan this year, joining politicians, government agencies, professionals and community organizations in showing support for LGBTQIA+ people and diverse communities. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex
MOTIVES QUESTIONED The PLA considers Xi’s policies toward Taiwan to be driven by personal considerations rather than military assessment, the Epoch Times reports Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) latest purge of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leadership might have been prompted by the military’s opposition to plans of invading Taiwan, the Epoch Times said. The Chinese military opposes waging war against Taiwan by a large consensus, putting it at odds with Xi’s vision, the Falun Gong-affiliated daily said in a report on Thursday, citing anonymous sources with insight into the PLA’s inner workings. The opposition is not the opinion of a few generals, but a widely shared view among the PLA cadre, the Epoch Times cited them as saying. “Chinese forces know full well that
RSS