[Editor's Note] Facing the Mudslide Menace

What is wrong with Taiwan?

Following Typhoon Herb in 1996 and the September 21 earthquake in 1999, Typhoon Toraji, a medium-strength typhoon that no-one expected to cause major damage, has left a trail of death and destruction across Hualien, Nantou, Miaoli, Taichung, Changhua, Yunlin and Pingtung counties, and as we go to press 84 people are confirmed dead and another 131 are missing. Seeing on our television screens the raging torrents, huge boulders, and houses at crazy angles, the bodies of victims and the shocked faces of survivors, our hearts bleed as we ask, "What can we do?" Once the initial rescue effort is over, we will also ask what else should be done to minimize the risk of such disasters in the future, or even prevent them happening at all.

To be fair, this time around government agencies at every level were unstinting in their rescue efforts, communication and command systems worked well, and the response was swift. The problem was that the disaster covered such a vast area and came so quickly. Many mudslides and flash floods came with little or no warning, so that people could only watch helplessly as their loved ones were swallowed up or swept away, to be parted from them forever.

The fact that stands starkly before our eyes is not that the government was dilatory in its response, or that the public failed to assist the authorities. The real issue is that if our thinking and actions go no further than "rescue" and "relief" for disaster victims, and we fail to work toward disaster preparedness and prevention, we will be doomed to endlessly relive the cycle of grief, pain and recrimination.

Mudslides, these monsters that have become Taiwan's greatest nightmare, are not mere acts of God. They are the price of years of lawless plunder of our mountain forests in the blinkered pursuit of economic development and affluence. A small number of people are paying with their homes and their lives for a whole society's rush to be rich. If we do not wake up to this fact, but merely trade accusations and blame everyone but ourselves, we will just be sowing the seeds of our own destruction.

What depths has our society sunk to? Even people in the world of education, who carry the enduring responsibility of cultivating the moral fiber of the nation, cannot resist the temptations of lust and lucre. When schools become "study shops," what kind of students do they turn out?

When our pet phrase is "You can't do everything with money, but you can't do anything without it," what can we expect the next generation to learn from us?

However, our failings should be the starting point for improvement. If only we are prepared to change our attitudes, abandon such pernicious myths as "you can't be happy without money," or "if it feels good, do it," and start from the basics-not taking what we shouldn't take, not demanding what we don't need, gradually making our lives simpler, reining in our desires-we will realize how foolish modern people are to spend all their energy rushing to earn money and rushing to spend it. Our lives are frittered away between these two extremes, and thanks to our greed Taiwan's forests and rivers, which were once incomparably beautiful and sustained generation after generation, have become demons that swallow people alive.

How can we appease the angry Earth? Premier Chang Chun-hsiung has already announced that CEPD chairman Chen Po-chih will set up a cross-agency taskforce to plan solutions to the mudslide problem. He also called on agencies to apply principles of sustainable development to land use: for instance, infrastructure projects should as far as possible avoid environmentally sensitive areas, and ways to restore forests and control rivers should be found that are in keeping with nature. Premier Chang also responded to suggestions from academics and the media by stating that he would seek feasible ways of relocating entire communities in endangered areas.

If government agencies can mobilize the vast resources and power at their disposal while respecting and applying specialist knowledge, they can surely achieve substantial results. But in the long run the most crucial aspect in preventing and mitigating disasters is still public attitudes. For example, since the mudslides caused by Typhoon Herb, the Council of Agriculture has required farmers who grow areca palms to plant deep-rooted shrubs between them to stabilize the soil, and has provided saplings for this purpose. But mostly the result has been that the palms have grown well while the shrubs have withered and died. The reason, as everyone knows, is that only the cash-earning crop is valued and cared for.

As for the tall buildings that stand on land reclaimed from river beds, or the villas and apartment blocks that have gnawed holes in our mountainsides, however deep their foundations and however costly their building materials it is hard to believe they are safe. The direct and indirect factors behind Taiwan's dangerous mudslides can all be summed up in one word: greed. Greed has caused us to lose our way, and greed makes us blind to the anger of nature and the suffering of others. Only when we put greed away from us will we really be able banish the menace of mudslides from our lives.