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Updated Sunday, August 23, 2009 11:22 am TWN, The China Post news staff

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Reshuffling the Cabinet is not enough

Maps outlining flood and mudslide hotspots are mostly ignored by developers and the public, because the government feared that publicizing them might hamper real estate and farming businesses, experts said.

The recent trend in Taiwan to develop scenic farming businesses has also added to the strains on the land, creating more mudslide-prone mountain slopes.

For too long, the people and the government in Taiwan have tried to squeeze the most out of the island's beautiful yet sensitive land, while crossing their fingers, hoping for the best. This August, the island was hit by the worst typhoon in 50 years.

As global warming will probably bring more extreme weather to the region, the government should do more than just punish the people accountable and strive for ways to prevent disasters in the future.

While President Ma's proposal to establish a national disaster agency may bring positive effects to the coordination of emergency response efforts in the future, the government must go further by instituting comprehensive measures that deal with the prevention of disasters.

The real litmus test of whether the Ma administration is truly humbled by Morakot, and whether the wet eyes of the mourning high officials were filled with crocodile's tears, is the willingness of the government to make the tough decisions to reform Taiwan's defunct land preservation policies.

Such policies are probably not vote-winners. They will probably cut into the profits of a lot of influential developers and even hurt some of the people already stricken by the storm this August, namely farmers and people who live in villages that may have to be relocated.

Yet the government must take the lead in learning from the lesson in which many had sacrificed their lives: that the Taiwan people must learn to live with its environment; that environmental protection is not merely a subject of education, a feel-good lifestyle or a luxury for the privileged. It is a matter of life and death.

Taiwan's economic development and the welfere of its people are extremely important, but they have to be achieved in a sustainable way.

Four hundred years ago next week, on Aug. 25, 1609, Galileo first showed the merchants of Venice his self-made telescope and started a scientific revolution by showing that the Earth is not the center of the universe.

Four hundred years later, in the age of science, human beings still have to remind themselves from time to time that obvious yet important truth: we are not the center of all things in this world and we must learn to live with them.

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