After the implementation of the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Construction and Planning Agency under the Ministry of the Interior (CPAMI) drew up an Integrated Coastal Zone Management Plan [in February 2017] with an eye to coastal sustainability and integrated management.

The plan aims to offer guidance on the conservation, protection, use and management of coastal zones as well as to promote their sustainable development through local linkages and the establishment of mechanisms to drive public participation in pilot projects.

Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above, an aerial documentary by renowned Taiwanese photographer Chi Po-lin, alerted people in Taiwan to the spoilage of the island’s scenic beauty, making them look at the mountains and the sea from a different perspective. Surrounded by oceans, Taiwan boasts a coastline of more than 1,500 kilometers with highly varied landscapes.

From north to south and west to east, the seaside offers unique coastal views and landmarks such as bizarre rock formations on the northern coast and the steep cliffs on the east coast. The south’s Hengchun Peninsula boasts coral reefs, whereas the west coast is characterized by a flat shoreline.

Taiwan’s coasts are quite accessible. The distance from any corner of Taiwan to the seaside won’t be farther than 70 kilometers. However, due to coastal defense restrictions in the past, it was difficult for ordinary citizens to get close to the sea. On top of that, seaside weather is said to be so unpredictable that fear of the ocean overrides memories of its beauty,” remarks Lin Ping-hsun, director of the agency’s Planning Division.

While Taiwan has excellent natural resources and conditions, the island is also threatened by typhoons, extreme weather conditions and other natural disasters. Moreover, excessive construction, environmental pollution and other ecological degradation caused by human activity have resulted in Taiwan’s natural coastline being on the verge of disappearing.

                       

Well-Rounded Coastal Zone Management through Integration, Coordination, Complementarity

After martial law was lifted in Taiwan in 1987, demand for coastal land reclamation soared beyond the original low-impact usages such as aquaculture ponds, farm fields and salt fields due to the construction of large industrial parks and holiday resorts. The government successively established 12 coastal conservation zones in a bid to protect the coastal environment and resources, but without a legal basis, these efforts proved ineffective.

Only in February of 2015, when the Coastal Zone Management Act entered into force, and after its Enforcement Rules went into force the following year, the agency drew up an Integrated Coastal Zone Management Plan in February of 2017 with an eye to coastal sustainability and integrated management. The plan clearly delineated the scope of the coastal zones and provided guidance regarding core issues such as coastal conservation, coastal protection, use and management of coastal zones to foster their sustainable development.

Since coastal zones had previously fallen under the jurisdiction of several competent authorities, responsibilities often overlapped or were insufficiently enforced, while the respective administrative approaches were inconsistent, ranging from lax to strict, so that the coastal zones lacked integrated and efficient management.

Therefore, the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Plan not only designates the type and grade of conservation zones and protection zones, it also designates the agency that formulates or implements the conservation/protection plan. The central competent authority is usually designated for first-grade zones, while local competent authorities are designated for second-grade zones, and given a deadline by which they need to submit their plans for review by the central competent authority.

Lin Ping-hsun, director of the CPAMI’s Planning Division

As Lin points out, the Coastal Zone Management Act subscribes to the spirit of “integration, coordination, complementarity”. First the agency is taking stock of conservation zones and protection zones that have already been delineated by law. Differing approaches are then integrated, and where weaknesses must be patched up, the case is sent back to the sponsoring agency if the problem can be solved through coordination.

For instance, in the past as many as 33 projects (such as reserves, catchment areas, important wetlands, etc.) under 15 different laws (such as the Forestry Act and the Fisheries Act) were related to coastal conservation zones. After taking stock, the management plans for 29 out of these 33 projects were deemed appropriate. If a sponsoring agency does not designate coastal zones or if there is no competent authority, the coastal competent authority comes in and takes over to prevent a situation where no one is in charge.

Aside from taking stock of conservation and protection zones, the agency is also appraising their use and management, classifying as special zones offshore areas, intertidal zones, conservation and protection zones, important coastal landscape zones and onshore zones that are located directly on the coast.

When land is to be developed inside such a special zone, an application will have to be filed with the competent authority to prevent the property development from damaging the environment and ecosystems and a dominant use of the zone. At the same time, the developer must also pledge to fulfill its corporate social responsibility.

Establishing Harmonious Ties between Localities and the Seaside to Realize Sato-umi Values

“Coastal management work is diverse and complex; it’s not a job that the agency can get done all by itself. We also need to coordinate with county and city governments and Cabinet agencies to implement coastal management tasks and to bring integrating and coordinating functions into full play to gradually work toward the goal of sustainable coastal development,” says Lin.

As conservation plans, protection plans and the designation of special zones continue to be promoted, the agency now needs to figure out how to mobilize and involve diverse forces in society.

Britain’s Geographical Association used its Coastline 2000 survey, which documented the coastline of England and Wales for future generations, to draw citizens’ attention to the coastal environment. The project attracted more than 450 schools and around 10,000 people to help with data gathering and photographing to map the shoreline.

Lin says, “I think this is a very good idea. Although the government has legislative tools, it is still necessary to go back to the localities to be able to truly protect the coastal environment. It is particularly necessary to assist civic groups in the neighborhoods. That’s why we launched our Pilot Study on Embracing the Coast and Preserving Natural Coasts through Local Linkages (abbreviated to Embracing the Coast) to assess what kind of cooperation models we could use with the localities and to establish pilot projects. In the next stage, there will be a subsidy program and a sustainable development program. We hope we can inspire more actions and forces on the ground that care about our coast.”

Monica Kuo, chair professor of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Chinese Culture University, says, “Countries around the globe are promoting so-called sato-yama and sato-umi concepts. Sato means a place where people have settled in a community. And the goal of sato-yama and sato-umi is to pursue positive interaction between settlements such as farm villages or fishing villages and their ecological environment.

Therefore, it is not just about conservation; we also need to ensure that we use resources wisely, that we manage them through human activity to allow natural resources and biodiversity to recover. Then we can achieve sustainable management and improve life and economic welfare in the communities.”

Kuo, who doubles as project leader for Embracing the Coast, believes that if one wants to establish a coastal management operating mechanism with linkages to local communities, it is imperative to forge consensus with local groups through sufficient communication at the first stage of the program. This consensus must then be translated into modes of joint participation by local residents.

Aside from just focusing on the protection of coastal resources, local culture and industries must also be respected. By pooling the resources of various Cabinet agencies and clarifying the current situation on the coast and the issues being faced, more appropriate and feasible conservation actions and environmental protection strategies can be proposed.

Therefore, three local teams in Ilan County were chosen for a first practical exercise (National Ilan University, the Society of Wilderness, and Su’ao’s Yueming Elementary School) to get to know various aspects of the shoreline from a local perspective. The initiative also aims to find out how local organizations, schools, and members of the community can obtain more coastal knowledge and protect the coasts through real action.

Photo courtesy of Yueming Elementary School

Establishing a Pilot Mechanism for Coastal Protection Action

Yueming Elementary School is located in Su’ao near the seaside Wuweigang Waterbird Reserve. The public school, whose management was privatized in 2016, was originally on the brink of closure due to declining student numbers.

Thanks to a school concept that focuses on the outdoors and ocean education introduced by Principal Aaron Huang, the school has become a popular destination for educators and other people with an interest in alternative teaching approaches.

“The ocean is Taiwan’s biggest resource and strength, yet our understanding of the sea is rather limited or even characterized by fear,” remarks Huang. Hoping to give children an opportunity to get close to the sea and understand the ocean better, Yueming Elementary School began to promote sailing as a sport, using small dinghies in 2007.

In the first year, sailing classes were run as an extracurricular activity to give parents and students an opportunity to assess the sport’s safety risks. The following year, sailing was officially included in the physical education curriculum. From third to sixth grade, the students have 15 sailing classes per term, and successful completion of the sailing classes is a graduation requirement.

The sailing training was mainly held within the confines of the Dongshan River since not all children were able to handle waves and ocean currents encountered in the open sea. Later on, the school therefore added other water sports such as snorkeling, surfing, bodyboarding and canoeing to let the students experience the power and rhythm of waves and interact closely with the ocean.

“Through these activities, the children became closer to the sea and experienced its beauty. Of course, they also saw the ocean waste, so later on the school launched beach-cleaning drives that are held twice per term,” says Huang.

The seaside activities also led to an interesting episode (that made national headlines). During a beach-cleaning drive last March, students found a camera floating in the sea, covered in barnacles and shells. Much to their surprise the camera was still intact and had battery power. As it turned out, the last picture had been taken on September 7, 2015, meaning the camera had been floating in the sea for more than 900 days.

Through the Internet the camera’s owner, a Japanese woman who had lost her camera scuba diving off Ishigaki Island in Japan, was found. Subsequently, the students adapted their adventure into a puppet play that was performed in elementary schools along Taiwan’s coast to draw attention to the problem of floating ocean waste.

On top of that, Yueming Elementary School began to use school lunches to educate students about fish as a food last year. School lunch ingredients were switched from the previously used imported fish species such as basa catfish, swordfish and shishamo to seasonal fish caught in Taiwan’s coastal waters or raised in local aquaculture farms.

At the same time, the students learned about each species’ distinctive features and ecological environment, fishing techniques, customs and culture associated with the fish as well as fish-eating skills. This focus on fish as food made students see the link between them and seafood in their everyday lives, which in return made them develop an emotional bond to the ocean.

Huang notes: “Through this collaboration with the CPAMI, Yueming Elementary School will incorporate coastal environment monitoring into the curriculum. We will integrate the Water Resources Agency’s coastal monitoring equipment, resources and experience. We will adjust the fifth-grade curriculum and select safe ocean areas where we will conduct measurements using stakes embedded in the ground [to measure sand movement over time]. We will build a data base and draw simple graphs und take photographs to let the children understand the cyclical changes in coastal dune movements and let them become protectors of the coast at the frontline.”

The agency’s Lin emphasizes that “Taiwan’s shoreline is so long that it is impossible to rely on the agency alone to do the job. The key to the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Plan is having local groups run the activities to achieve sustainable coastal zone management and resource conservation.

The goal of the Embracing the Coast program is using participation mechanisms in pilot projects to get more interested and like-minded local civic groups or seaside schools involved and pool their forces to jointly protect the natural shoreline by adopting sections of the coast, training volunteers, organizing educational activities on the coastal environment, conducting coastal resources surveys, monitoring and restoration research.”  

Translated by Susanne Ganz
Edited by TC Lin, Sharon Tseng
Content sponsored by The Construction and Planning Agency, Ministry of the Interior (CPAMI)