According to statistics from the Central Weather Bureau, there was already a trend of rising temperatures in Taiwan as early as the beginning of the 20th century, which certainly was connected to long-term climate warming. However, the real culprit behind the fact that the average temperature in Taiwan over the last century has risen by 1.2°C, higher than the global average of 0.7°C, could be the "heat island effect" brought about by a high degree of development.

The concrete kingdom

According to meteorologists, urban or industrial areas will produce more thermal energy than surrounding rural areas, and the heat will increase in proportion to population growth or degree of urbanization, so the temperature will certainly be several degrees higher than surrounding rural areas. If you depict urban and rural temperatures with isotherms, the resulting map would have the shape of an island. Meteorologists call this phenomenon "a heat island."

Many factors contribute to the creation of a heat island. In Taiwan, the leading culprit is the widespread use of concrete. "In the developed districts of Taipei City, only 16% of the surface area is water-permeable, nearly to the point where the land is 'suffocated,'" says Lin Hsien-te, a professor in the Department of Architecture at Cheng Kung University. In his latest survey, Lin says that urban concretization is getting worse all the time, making it more difficult to prevent flooding and dispel heat. The fact that Taipei is a basin, and therefore does not enjoy sea breezes which can carry off heat, only makes the problem there even worse. The southern city of Kaohsiung is much better off in that regard. That is why Taipei has higher average summer temperatures even though it is at a higher latitude.

"The creation of urban heat islands, increased damage from flooding, and the difficulty of dissipating heat are all related to the degree of concretization of the surface," notes Chen Jui-ling, director of the environmental control team at the Ministry of the Interior's Architectural and Building Research Institute, who studies urban environmental change.

In recent years there have been serious disasters caused by flooding and landslides, and many scholars point the finger at concretization. Two years ago Typhoon Xangsane caused serious flooding in Taipei's Hsichih district. Jeng Ming-shiou, an associate researcher at the Institute of Zoology at the Academia Sinica, says that the reason for the flooding, besides the excessive development of slopeland and the covering of the valley area in high-rise buildings, is that already one-third of Hsichih's surface area is sealed with concrete, destroying the ability of the slopeland to absorb and contain water, so there is nowhere for excess water to run off. "Nature isn't even allowed to help out where it wants to."

Last July, a mild typhoon dumped an astonishing volume of rain on Taiwan, causing flooding of unprecedented proportions in Kaohsiung Municipality, as well as in Fengshan City and Niaosung Rural Township in Kaohsiung County. Chiu Wen-hsiu of the water resources center at National Sun Yat-sen University believes that the flooding was related to the replacement of wetlands and farmland with concrete. As for Typhoon Nari, which bashed northern Taiwan last September, creating serious flooding in the greater Taipei area, with property damage exceeding that of the September 21, 1999 earthquake, concretization played an even more damaging role.

Concrete success?

Taiwan began to use large amounts of concrete following World War II. Concrete became the very symbol of progress. You can get an idea of the high esteem for concrete from brand names like "Western House" and "Good Fortune."

According to the Taiwan Cement Manufacturers Association, concrete consumption rose in Taiwan from an annual per capita average of 107 kilos in 1961 to more than 1300 kilos in 1993, since which time the figure has remained relatively stable. The year before last average per capita consumption was about 830 kilos, putting Taiwan second in Asia behind only Korea.

The popularity of concrete is connected to the fact that its price has steadily dropped. Right now in Taiwan you can buy 50 kilos for about NT$128; the cost of just over NT$2 per kilo makes concrete far cheaper than fruit or vegetables.

The mountains of Eastern Taiwan are rich in the primary raw material for concrete-limestone. From Ilan in the north to the mountains in western Taitung County in the south, there are estimated deposits of 300 billion tons of limestone, enough to last for perhaps 1000 years.

Besides the fact that concrete is cheap and easy to use, Taiwan has other reasons for using it. Huan Jui-hsiang, manager at the Hualien headquarters of the Asia Cement Corporation, points out that Taiwan does not have any steady source of lumber, while wood-built homes are at risk of infestation by termites, and wood can be attacked by fungi. For all these reasons, concrete long ago replaced wood as the main construction material.

Lee Hong-yuan, a professor of civil engineering at National Taiwan University (NTU), adds that because Taiwan is prone to earthquakes and typhoons, steel and concrete construction is naturally more appealing for safety reasons.

The concrete obsession

Concrete is composed of limestone, clay, silica sand, and blast-furnace slag, which is combined in the correct proportions, ground, and heated at high temperatures. Then, an appropriate proportion of gypsum is added to create what we know as concrete. What is most amazing about concrete is its cohesiveness. Take a quite ordinary-looking powder, just add water, and 30 minutes later it begins to crystalize, and gradually hardens, and once it cures is incomparably rigid and impermeable to water.

The early Egyptians used impure gypsum as a construction material. In ancient Greece and Rome people had already begun to fire quarried limestone to turn it into lime, then mix it with sand and water for use. This was the origin of concrete. In 1756, a British engineer discovered that by heating a mixture of limestone and clay, you can achieve a "hydraulic cementing" effect (which is to say, hardening upon contact with water). This marked the invention of the concrete that we still use today.

To achieve urbanization and construction of tall buildings, concrete is essential. However, concrete has seemingly become virtually the only construction material in contemporary Taiwan. "Concrete certainly is amazing, but misuse, excessive use, systematic corruption, and other factors have given concrete a bad name. In fact the problem is with the people who use it, and not concrete itself," says Huang Jui-hsiang.

Modern addiction to concrete has become so complete that now people pave over their yards in concrete, pave parking lots with it, spread it on sidewalks. . . until the whole city is like a concrete jungle, and even the last bit of green remaining, our parks, cannot avoid the fate of concrete surfacing.

Liu Wen-chao, an assistant professor in the Graduate Institute of National Development at NTU, argues that the fondness for concrete among people in Taiwan has become so serious that it could be considered "pathological," under the name "concrete obsession." He has written that he once went with a German friend to a recreational spot, and saw how this friend was absolutely delighted to see that the railings had been made out of rough, deep-green bamboo, only to find upon touching them that the sensation was of cold and clammy concrete.

In many places in Taiwan you can see things like concrete bamboo and concrete public art that leave foreigners gawping. Indeed, no one seems to think there's anything odd about them anymore. Even places with lovely names like "water park" and "ecological park" have been unable to avoid the curse of concrete.

"Managing" the rivers

Besides the concretization of construction and the living environment, even more difficult to imagine is that Taiwan's rivers and coastline are being steadily covered in concrete. In July of 2000, four workers were trapped by a flash flood in the Pachang Creek, and, while the country looked on, riveted to their television sets, rescue operations failed to save the workers and they were washed to their deaths. As fingers of blame were being pointed back and forth about the slow pace of the rescue operation, some people wondered what the four workers were doing there in the first place. The answer is that they were doing "riverbed reinforcement." Not long ago, a major bridge on the Kaoping River collapsed, and the reason turned out to be a deviation in the riverbed caused by a concrete reinforcement project. What does "riverbed reinforcement" really mean?

The former Taiwan Provincial Government budgeted more then NT$200 billion for "flood prevention, drainage, and water and soil conservation," with the aim of "managing" Taiwan's rivers. Riverbed reinforcement was part of that program. This aims at preventing erosion of riverbeds and riverbanks, done by straightening out river courses and covering riverbeds and banks completely in concrete. Through this kind of "management," rivers are completely concretized and "canalised," entirely destroying the scenic beauty of small winding waterways. As a result of narrowing the rivers and changing their courses, the speed of the water flow is increased, making the rivers in fact even more destructive.

This is particularly evident in the Taipei metropolitan area. All the small streams and irrigation channels of days gone by, lined with willow trees, have been "reinforced" right out of existence.

A necessary evil?

Besides the complete restructuring of rivers and streams, there's a similar problem along Taiwan's coasts. Taiwan is surrounded by water on all sides, and has more than 1100 kilometers of coastline. It is estimated that more than one-third of the coastline has been lined with protective engineering projects such as steel-reinforced dikes or enormous concrete wave-breakers. Even the small offshore islands have not been spared. In Chimei Rural Township in Penghu County, you can see a small uninhabited island completely surrounded by wave-breakers.

The question is not whether managing the rivers and coasts is a "necessary evil." The problem is that widespread concretization not only does not offer control, it cuts away at the natural environment and exacerbates disasters.

"The thing about rivers is not how to tame them, but how to learn to live with them," says writer and historian Chen Pan. There should always be a safety margin maintained between man and water; people can no longer simply occupy the rivers' space, but must allow rivers to reclaim their natural territory.

Kuo Cheng-meng, director of the ecology group at NTU's Global Change Research Center, says that rivers have their own balancing mechanism. Plant life, dirt slopes, and rocks in the river provide places where fish and shrimp can hide, lay eggs, and stay out of the rapid current; when these are removed, and replaced with inflexible concrete surfacing, the ecology becomes uniform, the water temperature increases, the river is no longer able to clean itself, and the river water flows faster and undergoes eutrophication. Many forms of life disappear.

Coastal concrete projects not only cut off interaction between the land and sea, they change the hydrology, raise the water temperature, and destroy life in the intertidal belt. "No other people are as ruthless to their seacoast as Taiwan," bemoans zoologist Jeng Ming-shiou. The concrete coastal embankments do not have the same heat-dispelling effect as do sand beaches, so the water temperature rises, and even marine algae cannot survive.

Jeng cannot help but be concerned, because the ecosystem is indivisible, and the sea takes all the waste from the land. "If the problems on land cannot be solved, then there is no hope for the sea either!" he says with frustration.

Thought reinforcement

Is it possible that there are no alternatives to concrete dikes, wave-breakers, and riverbed reinforcement to prevent erosion of our coasts and riverbeds?

According to Hsu Shih-hsiung, a professor in the water resources and environmental engineering department at Tamkang University, in the country that is most advanced in the development and use of the sea-the Netherlands-the coastline is covered with large, broad dunes and wind-breaking forests. In the US as well, coastal erosion is being reduced with more aesthetically and environmentally friendly means.

Chen Pan suggests that an obsession with concrete has the side-effect of reducing the sense of crisis in people. He says there is no harm in using soft dikes made of stone or piled-up rubber to replace "hard dikes" made of steel-reinforced concrete. "People know that soft dikes can be knocked over, so they are correspondingly more alert."

Faced with such suggestions, Lee Hong-yuan, who before becoming a professor was head of the Taiwan Provincial Water Conservancy Department, feels frustrated. He points out that 20 years ago, Taipei City began to build concrete flood-prevention walls, while at the same time Taipei County built earthen dikes. The residents of Taipei County protested continually, saying they were being treated as second-class citizens, and that the lives of Taipei residents were valued higher. Now the tide has turned, and the concrete flood-prevention walls in Taipei are seen as not being suitably environmentally-friendly. However, in most places in Taiwan the prevailing ideas are the same as 20 years ago, and concrete is considered more safe.

"I completely agree that check dams should not be built, and that we shouldn't do riverbed reinforcement projects that only address the symptoms, not the root causes," says Li. There is an important prerequisite, however: People must stop living in places where they don't belong, and roads must no longer be built in places unsuitable for roads. "This is a problem resulting from overall national land use planning," says Li, and the worst offender is the government's procurement system.

According to law, government projects for contracts are awarded by public tender must be awarded to the lowest bidder. Since concrete is the cheapest and simplest material, the natural result is that everyplace in Taiwan you see buildings and infrastructure projects made of ugly, low-quality concrete. "The use of non-organic materials like steel and concrete in post-war Taiwan has led to the creation of a concrete jungle in our cities. We must seriously assess how we can employ more wood and other organic materials," suggests Wang Yung-sung, a professor of forestry at NTU.

Huang Jui-hsiang, noting that one of the strategies in Chinese chess is to leave an opening to trap your opponent, says that public infrastructure projects should likewise leave some space that will draw floodwaters away from our most valuable assets. The idea of "leaving space" will help us strengthen our environmental structure, so we can minimize disasters, both natural and manmade.

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Taiwan has a beautiful coastline, but much of it has been wrapped in wave-breakers. Even experts are hard-pressed to come up with the perfect balance between protecting the land and preserving its beauty.

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People in Taiwan need ro rethink their dependence on concrete. Isn't it a little too much when even watery mermaids are rendered rock-solid?!

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Kids growing up in the concrete jungle find that even their playgrounds are paved. These kids will grow up with the feeling of concrete, not grass, under their feet.

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With global warming causing global climate change, rather than resisting nature by force, perhaps we can be more humble and learn how to live with nature as it is.