Farmers stand up for rights and sustainability

Hung Hsiang (left) leads the fight for Wanbao’s land and lifestyle. (Courtesy of Homemakers Union Consumers’ Cooperative)

By June Tsai

Wanbao Borough in Miaoli County’s Houlong Township is part of an alluvial coast in western Taiwan whose fertile fields grow watermelon, peanuts and sweet potatoes. Generations of farmers there have planted and sowed in rhythm with the seasons.

In the last few months, however, the 400 or so families of Wanbao have felt that their land and way of life are no longer secure, as they were surprised to learn that their farmlands have been included in a development plan aimed to boost local employment.

The farmers learnt of the plan in November 2008, when the Miaoli County Government notified them in the form of registered letters. The letters requested that Wanbao residents provide an appraisal on the value of their land. The villagers were mystified. Why should their land be appraised, when the owners had no intention of selling it?

The residents slowly realized that, without their knowledge or consent, the Miaoli County Government had drafted a plan to make their land part of a major science park development project.

This was a shock because over the last few years, the government has poured funding into improving the irrigation systems in certain agricultural areas, providing financial and administrative support for community and agricultural activities. And only last year, Wanbao was chosen by the Council of Agriculture as a model village for a government-supported rural area revitalization plan.

“Local residents still appreciate the government’s efforts in improving land quality and farming conditions in the past decades,” said Wanbao neighborhood chief Hsieh Hsiu-yi. “But it is incomprehensible that they want to abandon the fruits overnight.”

Shocked and angry, the residents banded together to express their objections. They have made appeals to the Executive Yuan, which has the final say in rezoning laws, and to the watchdog Control Yuan, asking it to look into the actions of the local government. Most recently, the villagers travelled to Taipei May 14 to protest the development plan.

“We want our land, not the money,” said Hung Hsiang, a farmer who is also secretary-general of the Wanbao Community Development Association, established in 2006. “We want to preserve this land for the next generation.”

Miaoli County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung said the economic value of the farmland is miniscule compared to the estimated benefits that the science park will generate—NT$30 billion (US$991 million) per year, not to mention 30,000 jobs.

The WCDA, however, argued that the park would not bring economic benefits on that scale. “The science park is not high-tech at all. It would be a waste of government resources to develop a park in Wanbao,” said a statement from the association.

The land in question measures 3.5 hectares, while the proposed science park measures 362 hectares, according to Liao Pen-chuan, an associate professor of urban planning at National Taipei University.

“A total of 1,550 hectares of land currently lies empty in Miaoli County, and there is plenty more throughout Taiwan. Why on earth would anyone want to build a science park on such valuable farmland?”

Some residents and experts called in to help suspect that a third party might be involved—the gravel industry. Some members of the industry, critics charge, are trying to make a huge profit at the expense of the residents of Wanbao.

“Beneath the surface soil, there is a layer of sand about 100 meters deep. It is the best piece of land you could ever hope to find if you were in the gravel business,” said Simon Ou, a Wanbao resident.

After the gravel has been dug out, the land could be sold again as a waste dump site, Ou noted. “The profit made through this two-fold exploitation is far more than could be made by selling organic vegetables.”

Despite these doubts, it is still unknown whether the gravel industry’s role in formulating development plans for Wanbao has any basis in fact.

“It is not that we are opposed to economic development. It’s just that the kind of development officials want would be meaningless here,” Ou said.

Unlike other villages, where young people have moved out to seek employment in the cities, Wanbao still retains a strong sense of community. Families living in urban areas bring their children home on weekends, and during planting season the young and old are often seen working together.

According to Chang Ya-yuan, a spokesperson for the Homemakers Union Consumers’ Cooperative—a local co-op set up 18 years ago by a group of environmentalists supporting healthy food and community agriculture—the Wanbao community is at a critical juncture.

“Once development starts, the situation will be completely irreversible,” she said. “Wanbao members are not only fighting for their own interests. They are fighting for a sustainable lifestyle which our age desperately needs.”


This article is first published in Taiwan Today May 28, 2010.

Green party battles to gain political foothold

By June Tsai

The Green Party Taiwan is traditionally thought of as an environmental group, not a bona fide political party that actually participates in electoral politics. The party, however, hopes to change this image once and for all in the upcoming Nov. 27 elections.

It bases its appeal in part on what it regards as flagrant infringements of environmental protection laws and disregard of the principles of social justice—both committed, it says, by the government over the past year.

In one case cited by the party, a court ruling was ignored by authorities, in order that a science park expansion project with potentially harmful effects on the environment could proceed.

In another, land appropriation rules were not followed so that farmland could be appropriated and turned into industrial parks.

The GPT hopes that these and other cases will rouse the public to a feeling of indignation, and that this feeling can be translated into votes for the party at the ballot box. If voters can lend support to the party, it will be able to balance social and political developments that have tilted too far in favor of growth at all costs, party members said.

“A popular prejudice against our party says we run in elections because we want to gain publicity for the environmental causes that we support,” GPT Convener Pan Han-sheng said in Taipei Oct. 23. “But that isn’t true. We are campaigning not just for a cause. We want to be elected, because by participating in the political system we can help bring about a sustainable future.”

During the upcoming elections, voters will choose new mayors and city councilors for the nation’s five special municipalities—Taipei, Xinbei, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung—whose populations combined represent over half of the entire population. The GPT has nominated four candidates to run for seats in the Taipei City Council, and one for Xinbei City Council.

“Our candidates run on platforms that cover a wide range of issues beyond the environment. They are ready to play a role in the monitoring of a city’s policymaking body,” Pan said.

But the nature of the two-party political system in Taiwan poses a formidable obstacle to the party’s aspirations.

This is not the first time that the party has run in an election. After the Green Party was formed in 1996, it fielded four candidates to run for the now-defunct National Assembly, advocating participatory democracy, ecological sustainability and social justice.

For the 1998 Taipei City Council elections, the party nominated three candidates, who together obtained 1.48 percent of the 1.5 million votes cast. It missed gaining a seat by a small margin.

Eight years later, in 2006, the party again ran in the city council elections in Taipei. Sadly, the party only garnered 0.57 percent of the votes, a significant decline from its showing in 1998. None of the party’s candidates came close to being elected.

In 2008, the country elected legislators under a new voting system, according to which votes can be cast for both individual candidates and a political party. Again, the GPT failed to win a single seat, as did many other smaller parties.

One reason smaller parties in Taiwan have a hard time winning votes is that the two main political parties—the Democratic Progressive Party and the Kuomintang (KMT)—tend to dominate politics.

“People fail to see that the Green Party’s agenda transcends partisanship, that Taiwan must become a responsible global citizen by paying attention to its enormous environmental problems, and that protecting the environment can be a good way of making money as well,” according to Linda Gail Arrigo, a sociologist and political activist based in Taiwan.

“While the KMT and DPP are engaged in navel gazing, the GPT has a real vision for the country, emphasizing its role in the world,” she said, adding that the GPT co-founded Asia Pacific Greens Networks, part of the Global Greens—an international network of national Green parties from around the world.

To make matters worse, election rules have been written in such a way that makes it difficult for smaller parties to grow larger.

In the 2008 election, the GPT received a total of 58,473 party votes, or 0.6 percent of the total, far below the 5 percent threshold required for the GPT to be recognized as an official political party under the new system.

The outcome meant that NT$2.8 million (US$90,300) deposited by the party with the government would not be returned. Instead, the cash deposit went directly to the state treasury.

As a result, the party, which can only make ends meet by membership fees and individual donations, announced in January that it was on the verge of bankruptcy.

“Election rules, determined by the country’s two major parties, have resulted in an unfair distribution of political resources and contributed to smaller parties being unable to emerge,” GPT Secretary-General Chang Hung-lin said.

“The two-party game is responsible for a variety of voices being ignored—those of children and youth, the poor and the marginalized, those of trees, animals and the Earth,” Chang said. “They don’t cast a vote, but they are all important if our society is to become humane and livable. It is for them that the GPT has to win.”

In Germany, Chang said, a mere 0.5 percent of votes entitles a political party to receive state funds, while in Taiwan the requirement is 5 percent.

Under the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act, political parties can claim state subventions in accordance with the number of votes they receive—NT$50 for each vote.

“That means the KMT and DPP respectively receive state subventions of around NT$20 million and NT$18 million per year. Under such circumstances, it is likely that the strong will get stronger while the weak will become weaker,” Chang said.

“If Taiwan had adopted the German way, the GPT’s 58,000 votes would have amounted to annual subsidies of NT$3 million, a sum that would have helped our party greatly,” he said, adding that the GPT’s annual budget is a mere NT$8 million.

Other unfavorable financial obstacles include the astronomical registration deposit required for running in an election—NT$200,000 in the case of a city councilor election—and a campaign finance law that says contributions to a political party cannot be used to claim tax deductions if the party receives less than 2 percent of votes cast, Chang said.

The party, determined not to follow what it regards as an unhealthy trend, says it will run its campaigns on a shoestring budget and in an environmentally friendly way. It is recycling posters and banners used in previous election campaigns. Its candidates get their ideas and proposals across, and canvass for votes, by meeting voters face to face on street corners.

The five Green candidates, ranging in age from 25 to 40, describe themselves as agents for citizens. Candidates elected the clean way, the party says, will become watchdogs, whose purpose will be to expose any irregularity in the policymaking process.

“Green parties the world over are unlikely to become a major party in any country,” Arrigo remarked. “Yet, like other green parties, the GPT has played a critical role in setting the agenda for the nation.”

“In Taiwan, the government now has no choice but to give serious attention to the issues raised by the party,” she said. (HZW)

This article is first published in Taiwan Today Nov. 19, 2010.

Experts urge rethink on land and water management

By June Tsai

Typhoon Morakot ravaged Taiwan over a week ago, and devastated the southern region of the island with torrential rainfall, causing floods and landslides that destroyed homes, roads and bridges. Many people quickly recalled the flood of exactly 50 years ago: Aug. 7, 1959, a tropical storm dealt a grave blow to Taiwan and cost it around 11 percent of the national income at the time. People are asking: have we really learned nothing from all past calamities?

The island has always been vulnerable to natural disasters, but decades of man-made errors contributed to the destruction brought on by Typhoon Morakot, said Ting Cheh-shyh, a professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology and director-general of the Blue Donggang River Conservation Association, a civil organization based in Pingtung County.

Mean annual rainfall in Taiwan over the past 70 years is 2,286 millimeters, but the typhoon brought around 2,000 millimeters of rainfall to many places on the island just between Aug. 7 and Aug. 8. The pounding rains caused landslides, some of which created barrier dams that then collapsed and buried towns and villages in mud. According to the latest estimates, the typhoon claimed up to 650 lives and brought about a total loss of US$3.4 billion.

“Granted, the rainfall was too overwhelming for citizens and all levels of government to prepare for and respond to properly,” Ting said Aug. 13. “Yet the core problem is that we have never really understood what Taiwan’s geological characteristics mean, or how to live with our high mountains and swift rivers.”

Most rivers on the island flow down steep slopes, creating fast currents and limited capacity for water drainage, Ting explained. In addition, frequent tectonic underplating and tropical weather make the earth and soil easily weathered and susceptible to the elements.

Instead of trying to cope with these geological, topographical and terrain features, what the island people have been doing over the past decades is “reclaiming land from the water,” the professor said.

Take for example the plains of Taiwan’s southernmost Pingtung County, a major agricultural region, which suffered heavily from Typhoon Morakot. The Pingtung Plains are flood plains created by four major rivers. Ting said the plains have supplied residents with sufficient underground water and helped absorb torrential waters during stormy seasons. In conjunction with Taiwan Sugar Corporation’s development of 1,000 hectares of land for sugarcane cultivation starting almost 40 years ago, several rivers have been banked.

“Building embankments made water flow swifter and stronger,” Ting explained. Water catchment areas in the mountains were also exploited; and in the coastal area, the pumping of underground water for aquaculture led to serious land subsidence. In recent years, the county’s Linbian River basin has never managed to avoid floods following heavy rainstorms.

Experts argue that decades of improper water management policies are responsible for the large-scale damage, which many believe to be as deadly as that from the major earthquake of Sept. 21, 1999.

In Taiwan, the job of river management falls entirely on the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Water Resources Agency, which is in charge of nine river management offices throughout the country. “The agency is mainly staffed with engineers, and their minds turn to blocking rivers when it comes to flood control,” said Hsu Chan-chuan, a spokesperson for Taiwan’s Water Watch Alliance.

The alliance, comprising dozens of nongovernmental green groups, was established in 2007 to oversee the implementation of the “Special Act for Flood Management.” The Executive Yuan proposed a “Regulation Project of Flood-Prone Areas” in 2005, planning to spend NT$80 billion to control rivers. When the special act was passed in 2006, the Legislative Yuan raised the funding to NT$141 billion, which would be spent between 2006 and 2013.

According to Hsu, “90 percent of the regulation project is devoted to building and strengthening dikes or similar projects, and the remaining 10 percent is earmarked for creating water detention facilities.” Recent cases show, however, that “building dikes, setting up pumps and so on just doesn’t work anymore,” she said. “If the direction is wrong, no matter how skillful the driver or how excellent the car, we will never get to the destination,” she said.

“Policymakers must face the reality that containing water is not going to meet the challenge of climate change,” Hsu said. In recent years a single tropical storm often brings over 1,000 millimeters of rainfall, belying flood-frequency estimates on which various hydraulic engineering works have been based, she said. During Typhoon Kalmaegi in 2008, for example, floods in more than 14 places already exceeded the predicted 200-year flood frequency. This did not lead to soul-searching regarding the flood control plan. This time, an internal WRA report revealed the flood frequency gauged at several places in the Zengwen, Bajhang and Gaoping river basins exceeded the forecast for 2,000 years. Reports abound on the collapse of dikes and debris barriers built not only on major rivers but also on unnamed streams, exacerbating the mudslides that occur following heavy rainfall.

“Increasingly extreme weather demands new thinking and water management methods,” Ting stressed. “What is happening is making the reckoning of flood frequency a myth,” Ting said. “It is time to stop exploiting land and rivers, and for people to learn again to live with water rather than try to conquer it.”

The best policy for flood control is “returning land to rivers,” or replenishing old alluvial plains, Ting said, citing ancient flood-control genius Jia Rang’s “three strategies for harnessing the Yellow River.” The second best policy is to divert floods by building channels, but the worst is to construct dams, reservoirs and levees to hold extra water.

“Over the past decades, the government has been pursuing exactly the worst policy,” the Dutch-educated professor lamented. With public urging, a sophisticated project that combines the first and second strategies was started to manage the Donggang River, said Ting, who was been heavily involved. The project, the first of its kind in Taiwan, aims to replenish underground water while diverting floodwater, he said, but it is yet to be completed due to intermittent government funding.

Ting suggested integrated water management methods must eventually be implemented. They involve water and soil conservation, as well as hydraulic engineering and water resources management. At present, these fall under different government agencies, with the Ministry of Agriculture responsible for the use and conservation of upstream lands, and the MOEA handling the management of water resources in the middle and downstream areas. “This division is highly problematic,” Ting said, stressing that for successful flood control, land and mountain and water management should be considered together as a whole.

A proper national land recovery plan with non-populist policymaking and implementation is essential for reducing damage brought by about natural disasters, experts urged.

Gloria Hsu, a professor of atmospheric sciences at National Taiwan University, pointed out in particular that the lack of national land use planning has led both the government and ordinary people to seek short-term industrial gains while ignoring the long-term costs to the land and the safety of the populace.

For example, “irrigation water is appropriated for environmentally unfriendly industrial developments, leaving the cost to the environment and public health for all people to bear,” Hsu stated in an article. A responsible government should not try to please influential people by allowing improper development plans to continue in sensitive land areas, she added.

A government must be honest and transparent with all information and explain clearly why certain locations cannot be built upon or used, and what the impact would be if they are,” said Liao Pen-chuan, an associate professor of urban planning at National Taipei University.

“The torrential rainfall dealt a decisive blow to an overdeveloped land,” he said.

This article is first published in Taiwan Today Aug. 21, 2009.

Cabinet greenlights landmark aboriginal self-rule law

By June Tsai

Taiwan’s aboriginals inched closer to realizing their dream of self-rule following a Cabinet decision to approve the proposed Indigenous Peoples Self-Government Act Sept. 23.

Initiated under Article 4 of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act, which guarantees equal status and development of self-governance for aboriginals, the legislation represents a milestone in ROC constitutional history and Taiwan’s indigenous peoples policy

If passed by the Legislature, the act allows aboriginals to open negotiations with local governments for establishing self-governed dominions. These areas can extend across county borders and would not invalidate current administrative demarcations.

Any self-government proposal requires the backing of over 50 percent of a tribe before it can be considered by the government. Jurisdiction disputes will be referred to the Cabinet for mediation.

“Drafting this legislation was a highly complicated process because it touches on different laws and the sensitive issues of administrative boundaries and finance,” said Sun Ta-chuan, also known as Paelabang danapan in Puyuma, minister of the Cabinet-level Council of Indigenous Peoples.

“The proposed bill is the most practical and substantive one we could come up with to benefit Taiwan’s aboriginals,” Sun said.

But Omi Wilang, an Atayal and spokesman for the Indigenous Peoples’ Action Coalition of Taiwan, disagreed with Sun, describing the bill as “lacking teeth.”

“A self-rule dominion without rights over finance and land is little more than fake autonomy,” he said. “Having to seek approval from local township representatives or city and county councils only sets up roadblocks for aboriginal self-government.”

Former Examination Yuan member Iban Nokan, also an Atayal, backed Omi’s stance. “The draft legislation relegates aboriginal communities to a status below townships and cities.”

Others, such as Obay’a’awi, a Saisiyat member and Hsinchu County councilor, were more optimistic about the bill. “Although the draft law is far from perfect, it is a strong beginning,” he said.

“All communities should now work together to get the bill onto the legislative agenda and push lawmakers to address its shortcomings,” he said. “Only through this process can we be assured of a law that delivers real benefits to Taiwan’s aborigines.”

Obay’a’awi believes that the Tao, Tsou and Saisiyat are likely to be the first peoples approved as self-ruled entities because their populations are relatively smaller and less widespread.

This article is published in Taiwan Today Sept. 24