1.1 Research topic
Challenges to reverse the once commonly held premise that oceans are an infinite resource, compounded with debates on jurisdiction, ownership, and subsequent responsibility and funding have complicated the process of decision-making vis-à-vis coastal-marine management. International collaboration to provide strong protections for marine environments is still in its formative phase, with just five percent of the world’s oceans secured in marine protected areas as of 2016.1 Although there is a growing awareness of the need to establish more protected areas and marine reserves, the cumulative impact of local and global threats remains a consistent source of pressure on the vast panorama of underwater life.
Coral reefs, known as the ‘rainforests of the sea’, are one of the most valuable and diverse ecosystems in the world. They occupy less than one quarter of one percent of the marine environment, yet are home to more than 25 percent of all known marine fish species.2 The reef ecosystem is a critical habitat for a variety of animal and plant species, and dependence on reef-derived resources for livelihoods and subsistence is a prevailing trend across the world. Yet, due to natural and anthropogenic disturbances, corals are rapidly deteriorating on a global scale. Although there is widespread recognition that coral reefs are severely threated, research and information regarding particular threats to particular reefs is limited, which inhibits effective reef management.
Research and recognition are closely connected, and the study of coral reefs and the dissemination of scientific knowledge to both governmental bodies and the general populace is a key step in preserving these diverse ecosystems. For instance, the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), the largest reef in the world both according to area and length (348,000 km2 and 2,500 km, respectively),3 has been and continues to be an international hub of academic focus. With over a century of intense investigations, the
1 UN Environment Wing. Accessed 8 March 2017.
http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2016/12/more-than-5-per-cent-of-worlds-oceans-now-protected-with-more-commitments-underway-un-environment-wing/
2 WWF, ‘Coral facts.’ Accessed 28 December 2016.
http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/blue_planet/coasts/coral_reefs/coral_facts/
3 Amanda Briney, 2017, ‘The World’s Largest Coral Reefs,’ ThoughtCo. Accessed 5 March 2017.
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-worlds-largest-coral-reefs-1435124
GBR is currently “the best-studied tropical marine ecosystem in the world”4 and has set the foundation for coral reef science. Policy support followed education and communication, aiding decision-makers and planners in creating long-term frameworks that will affect the survival of coral reefs. However, given the vast dispersal of coral reefs throughout the world, the amount of research dedicated to specific regions remains unbalanced. What is more, the general consensus that research in marine environments is more expensive than on land also hinders the acquisition of data necessary for effective coastal-marine management. Nevertheless, initiatives to inform communities, government agencies, and the general public about the existing threats to reefs and why action is needed to protect and rehabilitate them is a crucial step in reef management and conservation.
As Figure 1 illustrates, most coral reefs are located in the tropical oceans between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, with a particularly high concentration near the equator. The Tropic of Cancer runs through the center of Taiwan, dividing the island into tropical and subtropical climate zones in the South and North, respectively.
Figure 1: Major coral reef concentrations across the globe, provided by the World Resources Institute, 2011.5
Taiwan, also referred to as the Republic of China, is an East Asian island approximately 180 km off the southeastern coast of mainland China. Taiwan has a coastline of circa 1,566 km and total coral reef area of 940 km2,6 with a high density of coral reefs on the southern tip and on nearby smaller islands in the west (Penghu Island)
4 ‘Managing the Reef,’ GBRMPA. Accessed 8 March 2017. http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/managing-the-reef/how-the-reefs-managed/Managing-multiple-uses/scientific-research
5 World Resources Institute, 2011. ‘Major Coral Reef regions of the World.’ Accessed 8 March 2017.
http://www.wri.org/resource/major-coral-reef-regions-world
6 Summary Report for MPAs in Taiwan. Accessed 6 March 2017.
http://www.reefbase.org/key_topics/pdf/Taiwan%20mpa.pdf
and southeast (Green Island, Orchid Island) and with sporadic occurrences on the eastern and northern coastline. The current status of the reefs shows a wide range of variation depending on the region, yet there is a general trend of reef deterioration that goes in line with global trajectories.7 For this reason, seeking appropriate sustainability and protection strategies of the coral reefs should be a key objective. As such, this thesis intends to draw awareness to the situation of Taiwan’s coral reefs and aims to propose a possible framework to manage, protect, and rehabilitate them.
1.2. Research aims and questions
The World Resources Institute called the coral reefs “harbingers of change”, for their degradation offers a clear sign that humankind’s overreliance on fossil fuels is already changing Earth’s climate.8 A general consensus expanded upon later in this paper is that mitigating local threats may help ‘buy time’ for reefs until such global threats can be curbed. Thus, the significance of raising awareness of the value of coral reefs at the local scale should not be underestimated, and conservation efforts should be implemented for reefs of various proportions. As such, the main aim of this thesis is to draw awareness to the situation of Taiwan’s coral reefs and the people that rely on their resources, and subsequently to propose a possible framework to manage, protect, and rehabilitate these ecosystems.
As previously mentioned, information pertaining to particular threats to particular reefs is limited, marine reserve objectives are not evenly distributed across all cases, and threats do not target all reefs to the same degree. Research on a local scale is paramount to effective reef management. Yet, Taiwan’s coral reefs remain under-researched: (i) Taiwan’s reefs are not mentioned in large publications such as Reefs at Risk, which offers an analysis of threats to the world’s coral reefs. The main discussion is focused on larger reef coverages such as the Palawan Barrier Reef in the Philippines, or on the substantial import levels of live reef food fish into Hong Kong and mainland China. Of course, for brevity purposes, such assessments must provide a general overview of the situation at hand, but this creates an information gap that needs to be filled. (ii) The political status of Taiwan may be a reason behind an unwillingness to
7 Chang-Feng Dai, ‘The Proposed Coral Reef Marine Protected Area Network in Taiwan.’ Accessed 6 March 2017. http://www.globalislands.net/userfiles/Taiwan_2.pdf
8 Lauretta Burke et al., 2012, Reefs at Risk Revisited: Summary for Decision Makers, Washington:
World Resources Institute, p.v.
conduct international research and collaboration schemes in the area. Furthermore, a lack of English-language publications pertaining to the topic may be another reason why the island’s reefs remain in relative academic obscurity. (iii) Comparatively speaking, reef-derived economic incentives are not as significant a driver in Taiwan’s policy-making as in other nations whose populations heavily depend on reefs for sustenance and employment. Moreover, despite attempts by the Taiwanese government to implement environmental protection laws that include safeguarding coral reefs, evidence of institutional mismanagement implies that there is a strong gap between political will and state capacity, which in turn lags any attempt at proper reef conservation. In summary, accurate research is the foundation on which effective management can be built.
This paper proposes that coral reefs, sustainably managed, can be an important source of natural resources for Taiwan and generate economic value from tourism.
Based on this, the main research questions can be formulated as follows: what is the current development of coral reef protection in Taiwan? What are the economic and social challenges to implementing effective coral reefs management policies? And finally, drawing on international case studies such as that of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, what sort of framework may be applied to Taiwan?
1.3. Structure for this study
The thesis is composed of two sections. The first part provides an overview of the global current situation of coral reefs based on literature review. This includes such core information as the geographic location and size of the reefs, as well as a more qualitative enquiry into the importance of and need for continued coral reef survival. Then, an assessment of the current local and global threats as a result of anthropogenic activities is undertaken. Finally, existing management tools and frameworks to protect and sustain the coral reef ecosystems are provided. The first section thus provides a strong theoretical basis and a general overview of the status of coral reefs and global attitudes and solutions to their management, laying the foundation for section two.
Section two is the crux of the thesis, dealing specifically with the case of Taiwan.
First, the threats and challenges to Taiwan’s coral reefs are investigated to gain a more current awareness of the issue at hand. Then, a theoretical discussion on the concept of the environment as a common-pool resource is provided. Common-pool resources such as coral reefs have a high level of subtractability of use and difficulty of exclusion,
making it a very difficult resource to manage, especially given the pluralistic incentives at play. Indeed, when analyzing complex ecologies like coral reef ecosystems, the human role is inevitably intertwined in and affecting the environment. As such, a historical overview of the development of the Taiwanese environmental consciousness is elucidated; this is especially important given the 20th century political transformations, final democratization and subsequent emergence of environmental institutions. The case study of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is put forth as an example of multi-level, cross-sector collaboration of marine management. Taiwan’s own indigenous communities are analyzed in section six, including the Dawu’s extensive traditional ecological knowledge and marine heritage. Finally, coastal management and collaborative governance is considered for the case of Taiwan, including stakeholder incentives and proposed solutions and management frameworks for the island’s coral reefs. Through the paper, various interviews with governmental agencies, academics, and indigenous peoples are added to contribute to a more holistic insight into the subject matter.
1.4. Methodology and timeframe
Literature review underpins this paper’s data collection framework, and primary research methods in the form of interviews are used to cross reference information.
Interviews may supplement practical information that has been omitted by academic publications, enhancing the paper’s accuracy and adding a ‘human dimension’ to the proffered framework.
The author has interviewed three groups: (1) governmental agencies, including members of the Planning and Construction Agency and the Council of Indigenous Peoples in Taipei City; (2) scholars; and (3) indigenous peoples. More information is provided in Appendix 3. The reasoning behind this selection is threefold; firstly, it is important to examine what the policy-making and funding mechanisms are for the institutions and how they interact within the whole governmental body. Simply put, it is necessary to see how autonomous the agencies are in decision-making and goal-prioritization. From this, institutional strengths and weaknesses may be drawn, which will aid the study in finding a suitable and manageable framework for the protection of coral reefs in Taiwan. Moreover, interviewing the Council of Indigenous Peoples serves as a key link between the rhetoric of the government and the local peoples. It is
beneficial to gauge the main issues the Council and by extension the indigenes concern themselves with, and to assert the priority of environmental issues vis-à-vis other aims.
Secondly, it is crucial to investigate how policies reach down to the people. The Tao have been chosen as a representative of a local group due to their traditional reliance on natural resources, specifically, the flying fish which depend on the coral reef ecosystem for sustenance. By interviewing the Tao, the paper gains a more realistic overview of the situation from the grassroots level. It also serves as an opportunity to see whether the government’s and local peoples’ needs and interests align, and what the overall feedback loop is. From this, deductions concerning local awareness and engagement of coral reef management and protection may be drawn, as well as potential solutions to enhance this cooperation.
Finally, interviewing academics is important to see what has already been researched and how past papers have influenced policy-making and public governance, if at all. In conclusion, the paper conjectures that conducting interviews with these three groups, firstly, adds more insight to the data gained from literature review, and secondly, identifies the key issues at the government and local levels that will help form future policies regarding coral reef management and protection.