Looking into the distance down this road, you can't hear the waves or see where the horizon ends. Could this be a road of no return?

In the hazy drizzle an old man in a rain coat drives his ox cart back from the far end of the road. The ox is trotting briskly as if it wants to get out of the rain as quickly as possible. This coastal wetland in Jhanghua County stretches from the Lugang Canal at the Erlin River estuary southward to the Jhuoshuei River. Fifteen kilometers long and five kilometers wide, the wetland is as big as Longtan Township in Taoyuan County. Due to its significant bird population, the area qualifies as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.

But so far the Ministry of the Interior has been tardy in listing the coast of Jhanghua as major world-class wetland, alongside the wetlands in Sicao and the Zengwen River estuary in southern Taiwan. Instead, it has labeled the area "unclassified." It's in this indeterminate wetland encompassing the coastal towns of Fangyuan and Dacheng that Kuo Kuang Petrochemical Technology Corporation intends to build a naphtha cracker, which would be the island's eighth.

A World-class Wetland on the Verge of Destruction

It's not only that Taiwan's largest wetland is bound to vanish if the naphtha cracker project is realized. Lee Hong-yuan, professor at the Department of Civil Engineering at National Taiwan University and a harsh critic of the project, foresees a host of difficulties: Where is the huge amount of water that Kuo Kuang will need supposed to come from, given that the complex will be located in a land subsidence area that lacks water? And how is flooding to be prevented when the land subsides even further? How can the increasing salinization of the soil be addressed? And what is to be done about worsening erosion caused by sea water? These four questions expose the government's absurd policies on industrial development, water resource management and land use, as well as its coastal protection and agriculture policies, which seem to be suffering from scarcity themselves.

"It's like an unborn child with a fatal disease," says Lee, arguing that the crux of the matter is that although Taiwan faces climate change, there is still no islandwide land use planning. As a result, the government's policies are illogical, contradictory and confused.

Let's go back to the old man in the ox cart. He has been raising oysters for fifty or sixty years, single-handedly farming an area of around ten hectares. The tide determines the rhythm of his daily life. During low tide he will harvest a cart full of oysters, driving the swaying vehicle back home to the steady, rhythmical trot of his ox. "When I don't have money, I harvest oysters, and then I have money," the aged farmer says with a faint smile.

"The elderly in the cities go to the hospital to get medicine, but we old people go to the sea to make money," one local resident vividly explains.

People in Fangyuan make a living from the sea, forming a complete industry chain. There are those who raise oysters, those who process them and sell them to seafood restaurants, which again turn them into meals. "We don't have an unemployment problem here. Everyone has a job," declares township representative Hung Hsin-you. Natural sea water and the tidal flats make an ideal environment for oyster farming and crab catching. From upstream to downstream businesses, some 50,000 people depend on the sea for their livelihood, not counting their dependents.

Who Will Come to the Rescue of Central Taiwan?

In Jhanghua people live in symbiosis with the sea in a functioning ecosystem. Yet with the construction of the Kuo Kuang petrochemical plant, this is likely to face the threat of destruction. Tsai Chia-yang, who has been fighting against the Kuo Kuang project as chairman of the Jhanghua Division of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union, is angry that the issue does not get enough attention.

"The cultural community wants to save Taipei's ‘lungs'," he says, referring to the military's Arsenal 202 in Taipei's Nangang District, "but who will come to the rescue of Taiwan's ‘kidneys'?"

Author Chang Hsiao-feng and other prominent figures want to preserve the arsenal land, which has become an important bird habitat, portraying it as "Taipei's lungs," and are dead-set against the government's plans to construct a biotech park there.

An industrial belt of more than 100 kilometers in length runs along the western coast of central Taiwan from the Dajia River to the Jhuoshuei River. Major facilities include the Taichung Thermal Power Plant, the Kuan Lien Industrial Park near Taichung Harbor, the Jhanghua Coastal Industrial Park, and the Mailiao Industrial Park. Only the section between Fangyuan and Dacheng in southern Jhanghua remains clean from industrial pollution so far, yet it faces a potential crisis of immeasurably greater proportions.

Second only to Pingdong County, Jhanghua County has the most severe land subsidence problem in all of Taiwan. In the most affected areas around Fangyuan and Dacheng, land sinking, resulting from excessive groundwater exploitation, can be as deep as an entire story. And land subsidence continues to spread inland. Due to the sinking of the coastal area over a long period, seawater has seeped in, so that the extracted groundwater is salty and the soil has starting to become salinated. Now not even peanuts grow there anymore. In Dacheng, whose economy used to rely heavily on agriculture, the acreage of abandoned farmland keeps growing and expanding further inland. The height of the town's jetties has to be constantly raised to make up for coastal subsidence.

Should the tidal belt disappear, Dacheng and Fangyuan will lose their buffer zones. On top of that, the Kuo Kuang project will require filling the low-lying wetland areas to raise their elevation. But with the buffer zone gone, the area would be prone to even more severe flooding, Hung fears. Due to the altered coastal structure, the livelihoods of the more than 50,000 people there who make a living from the sea and their families would be in jeopardy.

"If we preserve this piece of land, then we'll still have a chance. But if we destroy it, we won't have any opportunity at all," Hung, a father of five, says with deep concern written on his face.

Water-intensive Industries Congregate in Water-Scarce Area

Chronic water scarcity is Jhanghua County's most pressing problem. An excessive amount of groundwater is extracted for aquaculture and agriculture. The Jiji Weir on the upper reaches of the Jhuoshuei River retains the water upstream, so the groundwater reserves cannot be replenished, and the amount of surface runoff has also decreased. As a result, downstream villages and towns lack water, which means they need to resort to pumping groundwater. They continue to extract groundwater even though the reserves have not been fully replenished, and the land sinks further in a never-ending vicious circle.

The 1.31 million inhabitants of Jhanghua County use a total of 380,000 tons of water per day, whereas the Kuo Kuang project would need 400,000 tons. Not to mention that the Erlin branch of the Central Taiwan Science Park, which has already passed an environmental impact assessment, will also be located in the water-deprived county.

"I have already discussed this with my wife – if Kuo Kuang comes here, we will move away," Hung says with a wry smile. Although Hung's family has lived in Fangyuan for generations, he does not want to see his children grow up in such an environment.

Tsai, who once did post-doctoral research at Tunghai University in Taichung, has also lived his entire life in Jhanghua. He raises another question that's on everybody's mind: The government does not want local farmers and aquaculturists to pump groundwater, yet does not provide them with alternative water sources. Water from the planned Dadu Weir will be supplied exclusively to Kuo Kuang and the Central Taiwan Science Park. "What are we supposed to do then?" he asks.

In Taiwan, agriculture, industry and ordinary citizens are engaged in an unending battle over limited water resources. And since the largest industrial water users are congregating in central Taiwan, the region has become a "pressure cooker."

"High-level people need to set the direction quickly, and pass the National Land Planning Act to plan from a perspective of national land use," says an official at the level of deputy minister, revealing his uneasiness about impending events.

Tsai Chia-yang ardently concurs. Leafing through a report by the Council for Economic Planning and Development on future industrial development, he points out that industry-related government agencies want to relocate the petrochemical industry to Yunlin and Jhanghua, whereas the agricultural authorities claim that Yunlin and Jhanghua are important farming areas. Yet both sides ignore the area's lack of water resources and the complicated issue of land subsidence.

Since national land planning lacks direction and strategy, Taiwan remains locked in a seesaw struggle between economic interests and environmental concerns.

But why has Taiwan ended up in such a predicament?

Five Problems that Harm the Land of Taiwan

Problem 1: Unclear land use planning

The government ought to designate areas that can be developed and areas that can't. Areas where development is feasible should be put to good use, while areas unsuitable for development such as ecologically sensitive regions or zones with land subsidence should not be open to haphazard development.

Tsai Chia-yang sighs with frustration – ultimately this matter concerns the long-term future of the nation.

The first matter that must be resolved is the legal infrastructure. However, the National Land Planning Act still languishes in the legislature, because the ruling and the opposition parties have not yet reached a consensus.

Problem 2: Thinking remains exclusively focused on economic development.

Shao Kwang-Tsao, research fellow at the Biodiversity Research Center of the Academia Sinica, cites as an example government efforts to realize sustainable land use. Cabinet agencies are asked to submit environmental restoration or protection plans, but a review of these so-called "sustainable use" projects shows that most aim to attract tourists to the seaside, by improving coastal sightseeing spots and bicycle lanes, or even by building coffeeshops.

From an ecological viewpoint efforts should be made to restore the natural state of Taiwan's coasts to bring back plants and animals that were driven away by development. But most planners don't understand what "natural coasts" actually mean and don't even carry out any ecological surveys.

Problem 3: Lack of bureaucratic coordination

Problem 4: Faulty communication leads to faulty judgments.

Lee cites water supply in southern Taiwan as an example. If Kaohsiung County opposes the construction of the Meinong Reservoir and also refuses to allow water from the county to be diverted into the Tsengwen Reservoir in Tainan County, then the Water Resources Agency under the Ministry of Economic Affairs needs to clearly estimate the limits of the water supply and to notify the Executive Yuan of the situation. Under this scenario, the existing water volume constitutes the upper limit for development in the south. Based on this upper limit, the maximum population size must be discussed, while no industry whatsoever can be allowed to exist. All these points must be made clear, so that the Executive Yuan can reach a correct judgment, formulate national policy and even communicate with the public. If everyone agrees, the industrial structure of the south needs to change, switching from its heavy industry focus to a tourism and recreation industry.

"The Executive Yuan needs to know how to make demands, and the Water Resources Agency also needs to know how to talk with the Executive Yuan. But often one of them doesn't know how to ask questions, and the other doesn't know how to answer," says Lee.

Problem 5: Politics overrides expertise.

Lin Sheng-feng, associate professor at the Department of Architectural Design at Shih Chien University and a former minister without portfolio, speaks from personal experience. He contends that both the Kuomintang and the Democratic Progressive Party are like mafia gangs, and no matter which party controls the central government, the technocrats are forced to follow the respective gang leader. All that counts are votes, especially during election time, and such political interference distorts values.

Could this be a road of no return? In a country with no land use planning, in a society that lacks a green blueprint, when the land and the environment have been destroyed, everyone will ultimately pay a painful price.

Translated from the Chinese by Susanne Ganz