The nation is parched, reservoir levels are low and a drought looms. It was against this backdrop that Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said he was hoping a typhoon would come along soon to offer some respite. This comment was roundly criticized.
It is only March and the typhoon season is four or five months away. Saying you hope a typhoon will come soon to drown out the drought does not make sense. While it is true that typhoons do bring rain, they cause a lot of damage. In 2009, the Water Resources Agency praised Typhoon Morakot for the much-needed water it brought — the highest amount of rainfall in 50 years — that filled the reservoirs to the brim and ended a drought. However, with such heavy rainfall over such a short period came much destruction and more than 600 lives were lost.
Rainfall during the typhoon season accounts for more than 55 percent of the nation’s annual water supply. They are the main source of water, followed by the East Asian rainy season, or plum rains, in late spring and early summer. It makes more sense, then, to put one’s hope in the plum rains, not some premature typhoon.
Taiwan is surrounded on all sides by water and it rains frequently. The public need to learn how to have a positive relationship with weather fronts and typhoons, and to value the rain they bring.
Although it rains often, the rivers running down from the mountains are relatively short and rapid-flowing because of the steep gradient, and storing the run-off presents a problem. The public is often unaware of the importance of conserving water until a drought hits.
The government should not have to pray for rain. Its job is to review the nation’s water usage strategy and to decide how much water is allocated for industrial use and how much for the general public. Naturally, the priority should go to the latter, but when water resources are low, it is only right that swimming pools and car washes are among the first things to be restricted.
Water-intensive farming also needs to be addressed during times of shortage, by controlling the water supply or even by encouraging a change to drought-resistant crops.
The water allocation policy needs to be rethought for water-intensive industrial processes by, for example, requiring companies to increase their use of untreated water.
If the government is concerned about droughts, it should be looking at the use and reuse of existing water resources, and perhaps also at setting the price of water at levels that will encourage the public to conserve it. If all the sewage treatment plants nationwide were operational and half of the 3.8 million tonnes of water used every day was recycled, we would not need to build another reservoir.
The nation already has many reservoirs. Unfortunately, they are prone to getting clogged up by silt from the deforested mountainous regions, helped along by frequent earthquakes and landslides. This silt not only reduces the capacity and operational lifespan of reservoirs, it is expensive to remove. The government should think about how to maintain upstream regions and protect the environment in those areas, to help keep reservoirs free of silt.
As global climate change exacerbates the cycle of droughts and floods, it is going to take more than simply regulating the supply and allocation of water resources to ensure our water needs are met. The government is going to need to come up with a national land usage and industrial restructuring plan, including land development, allocation and usage, a move away from water-intensive industries and a more efficient supply of water resources.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017