Taiwan creates international alliance for disaster prevention and response

Sthe organization, promoted by Taiwan, has as founding members the island, 11 of its diplomatic allies and Somaliland, as entities from 21 other countries, including the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Turkey and the Philippines, participate as observers or partners.

The forum brought together in Taipei more than 500 experts, government officials and local and foreign business representatives to discuss climate change, geopolitical risks, “grey zone” threats, cooperation between civilians and military and resilience models.

Speaking at the opening of the Taiwan Resilient International Forum for Sustainable Democracy in Taipei, William Lai described the creation of WADM as “an important advance for Taiwan in more than half a century of efforts to participate in international organisations.”.

WADM aims to link governments, authorities and disaster prevention and response organisations from various countries, promoting joint training and exercises, mutual assistance and information sharing.

According to the Taiwanese Presidency, cooperation should cover the different stages of disaster management, from early warning to emergency response and recovery, with the aim of transforming Taiwan into a cross-border coordination centre in this area.

The Taiwanese President associated the new organisation with the strategy to strengthen the resilience of the island’s society two years after the creation of an entity to strengthen society’s responsiveness through cooperation between the public and private sectors and the involvement of the government, companies, universities, research centres and civil society organisations.

“ After two years of preparation, we are confident that the current Taiwan model has something to offer to the international community and can serve as a basis for other countries seeking to strengthen their own preparation,” Lai Ching-te said.

The head of state referred as an example the annual military exercises Han Kuang and the urban resilience exercises carried out in August, which simultaneously involved civil bodies of central and local governments.

In the face of what he classified as an international scenario in rapid transformation and growing threats from China, Lai stated that its function is to ensure that Taiwan is better prepared and has greater capacity to maintain the status quo and to prevent peace from being compromised by “unilateral provocations”.

Beijing considers Taiwan an integral part of Chinese territory and does not exclude resorting to force to promote reunification.

The Taiwanese Government, led since 2016 by the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), a formation of soberanist tendency, argues that the island is already ‘de facto’ an independent country and that its future can only be decided by its 23 million inhabitants.

Lai stressed that Taiwanese defence expenditure has doubled over the past decade and that its administration has proposed for the first time for the coming year a budget of more than one billion Taiwanese dollars (27.3 billion euros).

The Taiwanese President argued that global democracies should strengthen cooperation at a time when, he said, authoritarian forces seek to spread fear and foster divisions.

“Taiwan will continue to expand his participation by contributing to the world, building trust through professionalism and connecting to the world through cooperation,” he said.