Taiwan Today

As post-disaster reconstruction work continues in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot, which hit Taiwan in August and caused the nation’s worst natural disaster in 50 years, an overhaul of the country’s land use has become imperative. The government is moving full speed ahead in legislating the long-overdue National Land Planning Act. The bill was approved in a Cabinet meeting Oct. 12 and sent to the Legislative Yuan for immediate review. But speeding up the review of the law in its current form has civic organizations worried that a law not well thought through will do more harm than good. In a forum held by the nongovernmental Organization of Urban Re-s Oct. 31, concerned members of civic groups congregated to exchange views and sought to revise the government version of the bill, which they felt leaves a lot to be desired with regard to its direction, principles and technical feasibility. The act in question would divide national land into four zoning categories: land conservation, marine resources, urban and rural development, and agricultural development. The central government would mainly be responsible for demarcating land conservation and marine resources zones, while local governments would take charge of the other two. In analyzing the bill, Hsia Chu-joe, a National Taiwan University professor of architecture and planning, said a schematic land-use plan such as the one under review would prove unfeasible or out of date as soon as it was passed. Hsia argued that Taiwan’s landscape is undergoing a massive restructuring, and a forward-looking land-use plan should be in place to address the challenges brought about by the expansion of urban areas, the disappearance of rural regions and the growing frequency and impact of natural disasters. “Governments the world over are faced with similar challenges, which threaten to incapacitate them,” he said. In Taiwan, where the private sector has been more flexible and active than the public one, “policies, rather than guidelines, will be better tools for managing growth and forestalling the consequences of rampant development,” he said. Hsia pointed out that the act fails to face the reality that the development gap in Taiwan today is not one between north and south. “The reality is the urbanization of the long strip of Taiwan’s west coast.” He noted that many land issues, such as the management of mega cities, rivers that run through many administrative areas, and aboriginal territories, are not confined to the jurisdiction of one local government. “Overlap of jurisdiction would cause great problems,” the professor said. To correct this, Hsia suggested a review committee should be established under the Cabinet-level Council for Economic Planning and Development, with the vice premier as its convener. This committee should be responsible for reviewing land-use proposals submitted by various government agencies when their budgets exceed NT$500 million (US$14.7 million). No money should be earmarked before review by this committee. In relation to this, Hsia said the government should show its determination to really do something by assigning the responsibility for carrying out the act to the CEPD, which according to a government plan will be upgraded to become the Council for National Development. Implementation of the act is currently assigned to the Construction and Planning Administration, “which is merely an administrative agency, rather than a policy-making one.” Hsia said another very serious problem is the lack of an aboriginal-centered government body having greater power than local governments to carry out land-use planning involving aboriginal territories effectively and with understanding of indigenous people’s cultures and concerns. “Indigenous people have rarely been included in the policymaking process involving their traditional territories, rights and ways of life,” he said. In fact, regulations in the National Land Planning Act pertaining to aborigines would supersede those of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act of 2005. Participants were positive about the setting aside of land conservation zones, yet many were suspicious about Article Five of the act, which is dedicated to issuing land-development permissions. “It’s like opening a back door to the evils of overdevelopment within a law meant to enshrine the protection of national land,” said Peng Yang-kai of OURS. Likewise, Peng said, the bill does not put an end to a controversial article in the country’s Agricultural Development Act, which allows residences to be built in the midst of farmland and has since its passage in 1999 opened the door to the rapid annexation of arable land. The act on national land planning was first proposed in 1993. Yet in the past years, drive for economic development, pressure from vested interests and election campaigns have kept it from becoming law. Now the rush to pass the law looks like a strategy for the government to evade the real issues of land conservation and the destructive consequences of decades of overdevelopment, said Ho Chen Tan, president of the Taiwan Ecological Engineering Development Foundation. “There are actually enough laws in place if the government has the will to recover overused land and prevent further disasters from happening soon,” Ho Chen said. He pointed out that the bill, which fails to clearly set a date for the act to go into effect, gives a six-year time frame for the land use plans to be completed. “If all goes well, it would take at least four additional years for other related rules that contravene this one to be amended, but by then it might be too late.” Ho Chen urged civil groups to focus on getting the government to clarify its position on individual development projects where there is policy conflict. “We can then ask the government to abide by what it professes, rather than allowing it to use the legislation as a shield to deflect its responsibility.” Hsia concluded that if it were not for the past typhoon disaster, this act would still have been sitting idly in the Legislative Yuan. By intervening in the law-making process, society should oblige the government to take the law and the problems it sets out to cure seriously, he added. “Friends used to joke that the only viable development plan for Taiwan is to build the island into a global junction for tourism and the cultural and creative industry,” Hsia said. “They might be right.” (THN)