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EDITORIAL: New
mindset puts nature first
There was some good news for environmentalists, preservationists and Aborigines
this week — not from the central government, but from the Pingtung County
Government — which stood up for common sense and a sense of history, and against
ill-planned development for development’s sake. Let’s hope the central
government takes note and follows suit.
A county review committee has designated 841.3 hectares of public land as a
nature reserve to preserve the Alangyi Trail, a 12km-long coastline trail that
had been threatened by the planned construction of a section of Provincial
Highway No. 26 that would have run alongside the trail, destroying the pristine
nature of the area and threatening the hundreds of species of flora and fauna
that find a home there, including the endangered green sea turtle.
The trail was established in the 1870s by Aborigines, who used it to travel
along the Pacific coast between what is now Hengchun (恆春) in Pingtung County and
Taitung County.
Last July, the Pingtung County Government designated the area around the portion
of the trail under its jurisdiction a temporary nature reserve. Now that
designation has been made permanent — under the guidelines of the Cultural
Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保留法). It covers the area from Syuhai Village (旭海)
in Pingtung to Nantian Village (南田).
It has been a long battle to save the last 1 percent of natural coastline in the
nation, going back almost a decade, since the highway construction project
passed an environmental impact assessment in 2002. You have to wonder if any of
the people on the assessment committee had ever been down to the trail, to see
what they were willing to sign away.
The eastern coastline is one of Taiwan’s most beautiful features; it is also the
most frequently lashed by typhoons. The result is, unfortunately, that if you
drive along the coast, much of what you can see is now “protected” by concrete
tetrapods and other barriers.
In a bid to entice more tourists to the east coast, several developments along
the coast of Hualien County and Taitung are either underway or in the planning
process, including the much-derided and condemned Meiliwan Resort Hotel at
Shanyuan Bay and other recreational parks and hotels. So not only will there be
a long link of concrete structures along the coastline, concrete will cover much
of the land as well. Paving over natural scenery and resources is not the way to
attract tourists.
All too often these development projects have been dropped on local communities
in the name of national development, with little regard to their feelings and
wants. Complaints are brushed aside with the excuse that approval of such
development projects has been made in accordance with the law.
However, adherence to the law, especially the Administrative Procedure Act
(行政程序法) and the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act (原住民族基本法), appears be cursory at
best, even though developers always complain of excessive red tape. The required
public hearings are not held, or held after a decision to proceed has already
been made, while the need for the consent and participation of local Aboriginal
residents is treated with perfunctory disdain.
Last year, environmentalists and other activists scored a victory when the
Kuokuang Petrochemcial Technology Co project in a wetland area of Changhua
County on the west coast was scrapped in April because of concerns over water
consumption, land subsidence and pollution in such an ecologically sensitive
area. That too was a victory of common sense over over-development.
Just as there were complaints about the Kuokuang outcome, there are some who
still want to see a road built next to the trail and who will lobby for a
reversal of the Pingtung County Government’s decision.
However, these two decisions in favor of the environment are the start of a new
mindset in Taiwan.
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