President Ma Ying-jeou met on the afternoon of April 22 with a delegation of representatives from private environmental protection organizations in Taiwan. The president applauded the dedication of these organizations and individuals over the years to environmental protection. He also explained the government's policy plans and visions with respect to national spatial planning, the tourist gaming industry, renewable energy sources, the conservation of plant and animal life, and sustainable development.
In remarks, President Ma noted that April 22 was the 44th anniversary of Earth Day, and that his guests were all veterans of the environmental movement and important opinion leaders in their field who on April 19 and April 20 had helped hold a national conference on environmental affairs to forge consensus and present suggestions to the government.
The president noted that national spatial planning is the foundation of national development. Well thought-out national spatial planning can effectively enhance national competitiveness, he said, which is why the government places great importance on national spatial planning and safeguarding the nation's land. A draft of the National Land Planning Act now under deliberation in the Executive Yuan, he noted, provides that basic principles governing national land use will be established to promote the sustainable development of national land. This bill calls for an overall national plan as well as individual plans for each special municipality, county, and city. Moreover, he said, national land will be classed into several types, including: conservation areas; marine resource areas; agricultural development areas; and urban and rural development areas.
The president then addressed concerns about the social impact of the gaming industry. President Ma explained that the government has already developed a comprehensive plan and adopted supervisory and regulatory measures to govern all aspects of tourist casinos. In addition, he said, the government has completed a draft of the Tourist Casino Management Act. With an eye to the policy objective of relying on tourism to drive economic development on offshore islands, plans have been drawn up to build integrated resort areas that include tourist hotels, convention centers, and shopping centers. Meanwhile, the draft bill clearly limits the floor area for gaming in any given international tourist resort to no more than 5% of the total floor area. This, he commented, will ensure that gaming serves only as a catalyst of the tourism industry on offshore islands.
The president then discussed the topic of renewable energy sources. He mentioned that the Ministry of Economic Affairs, acting in accordance with the Renewable Energy Development Act, has created a comprehensive mechanism to promote renewable energy and the use of reasonable feed-in tariffs and guaranteed purchases over a period of 20 years to encourage private investment in renewable energies. The president stated that the government is also promoting initiatives such as the installation of rooftop solar energy panels and the construction of 1,000 land- and sea-based wind turbines, and has set a target for the installed capacity of renewable energies throughout Taiwan to reach 13,750 megawatts by 2030, up 26.7% from a previous target of 10,858 megawatts, he said. President Ma commented that the vision is to create a green energy and low-carbon environment that features sustainable development.
The president then mentioned how the government is working to strike a balance between economic growth and environmental preservation, and stated that the green economy was an important topic at the recent national conference on environmental affairs that his visitors had helped organize. He said that the development of a green economy is one of the main focal points in the outcome document of the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), entitled "The Future We Want," which stressed that we need growth models that promote balanced integration of environmental, economic, and social concerns. The president also stated that the National Development Council last year began drafting a "Policy Agenda for a Green Economy" for government agencies to formulate concrete action plans and promote green economic development.
President Ma stressed that in seeking to develop the economy, the government is also working to maintain a good quality environment. The foremost issue in this regard, he said, is to enhance air quality, which means that fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is now subject to regulation. The president remarked that, over the past five years, Taiwan's air quality has improved significantly, adding that in 2013 the number of days in which air quality had a negative impact on human health accounted for only 0.96% of all days in that year, which is much better than the 2.87% figure for 2008. He said that government agencies are already working to set caps and amend legislation accordingly in order to improve air quality in Taiwan.
The president stated that many substantive achievements have been seen in environmental protection in Taiwan. For instance, he noted, the number of seriously polluted stretches of 50 selected primary and secondary rivers and streams in Taiwan has declined 70% from 10 years ago. As for air quality, the number of poor air quality days reported by air quality monitoring stations throughout Taiwan has decreased 73% compared with before he took office in 2008. Also, the amount of refuse and recyclables generated per capita per day is about 0.38 kilograms, down by some 66% from a peak of 1.1 kilograms. President Ma said that the government will keep working to protect the environment, taking care in the process to strike a proper balance between economic and environmental concerns.
The representatives that the president met with included Society of Wilderness President Lai Jung-hsiao (賴榮孝), Life Conservationist Association Founding President Shih Chao-huei (釋昭慧), Pingtung County Environmental Protection Union Chairman Hung Hui-hsiang (洪輝祥), Chinese Wild Bird Federation President Lin Shih-chung (林世忠), and Pan Chung-cheng (潘忠政), chairman of an environmental protection union in Taoyuan County.