Water Meet Highlights Isolation

Despite more than 100 new commitments on water made by the participants of the 3rd World Water Forum, which concluded on Sunday in Japan, Taiwan remains alienated from the international society in the water sector.

At the eight-day forum, 24,000 participants from 182 countries participated in 351 separate sessions on 38 interlocking themes dealing with water, especially on how to bring safe water and sanitation to the entire world.

The participants addressed methods of balancing humanity's increasing water supply needs. Also considered were techniques for improving the health and sanitation of available water as well as the use of water for food production, transportation, energy and environmental needs.

To address the problems related to water usage, most countries will require more effective governance of water resources while improving capacity and finding adequate financing to promote greater efficiency.

Taiwan's delegation to the forum reported on aspects of the nation's experience in controlling urban floods and conducting land subsidence mitigation at the forum's venues in Kyoto and Osaka last week. However, various legislators, local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and academics said that Taiwan could have been more active in its involvment with the forum.

DPP lawmaker Eugene Jao (趙永清), who arranged a personal trip to Japan to observe the forum, said that the forum secretariat actually sent the Legislative Yuan an invitation to parliamentary sessions, but that the invitation was turned down by the Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Committee. Jao said he had been unaware of the invitation until he arrived at the Kyoto International Conference Hall, where the forum was held on March 18.

"I was sorry to see the Legislative Yuan's limited awareness of global sustainable development," Jao said.

Jao said the negligence made Taiwan miss an opportunity to publicize it's efforts made in promoting sustainable development issues concerning water.

In addition, Jao said that he regretted seeing Taiwan's involvement in the forum lay particular stress on the technological side, rather than social issues.

As Taiwan could not join the ministerial conference held on Friday and Saturday, the delegation, composed of 30 water resources officials in addition to experts from universities and private enterprises, returned to Taiwan on Friday.

Although Water Resources Agency (WRA) director Hwang Jing-san (黃金山) said that the agency would still keep itself well informed of the updated views shared by forum members worldwide, local NGOs criticized the government's reluctance to learn new strategies to manage water resources from a social perspective.

Of the more than 100 commitments reached during the forum, the climate theme accounted for more than 20 commitments.

At the forum, attendants agreed that the "community level public participation is fundamental to achieving these goals" as well as the "common basic requirement for water is an opportunity for cooperation and peace."

"In the past, we've fully known that governmental water resources technocrats despise others with no civil and water conservancy engineering background," said Chang Cheng-yang (張正揚) of the Meinung People's Association (MPA,美濃愛鄉協進會), a grass-roots organization that opposes the dam.

Chang argued that the WRA had never learned up-to-date theories on water resource management, such as concepts pertaining to capacity building.

At the forum, participants recognized that the need for capacity building, education and access to information for enhanced effectiveness in water management is unquestioned.

They also admitted that these critical elements of the water development process are often treated as an add-on to programs, with scant regard to local capacity-building institutions, gender mainstreaming, cultural diversity and traditional knowledge or to long-term commitment.

Chang said the government's conservative attitude toward water resource management ironically made local NGOs focusing on water issues link themselves with their counterparts at an international level.

Next week, Chang said, MPA would publish the Chinese version of "Citizens' Guide to the World Commission on Dams," which was originally produced by the International Rivers Network (IRN) based in Berkley.

At the forum, IRN representatives said pseudo-solutions to existing problems pertaining to water could be driven by personal, institutional, corporate and political interests.

Aside from Taiwan's reporting its experience at the international forum, long-term unsolved problems deserved more attention, said Yeh Shin-cheng (葉欣誠), a water resources engineering expert at the National Kaohsiung Normal University.

"For example, the existence of unsolved problems pertaining to land subsidence can be attributed to local governments' reluctance to take legal actions to tackle illegal drilling and to close illegal wells," Yeh said.

Yeh said land subsidence mitigation was being used by local political factions to gain influencez. Political interference, Yeh said, hampers Taiwan from pursuing a sustainable future.

Water resources experts estimate that there have been about 40,000 illegal wells that over consume ground water.