National Parks of Taiwan

The “Sino-Japanese Modern Engineering and Technology Symposium” is an important platform for exchange between Taiwan and Japan in the field of engineering technology. The symposium has planned dozens of issues every year in the past few years, including energy conservation and carbon reduction, urban development and disaster prevention, climate change, sustainable development, and national park administration. The Chinese Institute of Engineers invites dozens of representatives from the Japanese government, academia and engineers to engage in extensive and thorough exchange with professionals from industry, government, academia and research institutes of Taiwan. And this has made the symposium extremely influential. The 31st Sino-Japanese Modern Engineering and Technology Symposium will be held from November 30th to December 4th, 2015, and will discuss 18 topics. The topic related to national park administration is “Cooperation between Public and Private Sectors in National Park Administration” brought by Mr. Norio Saito, Director of the Natural Environment Coexistence Technology Association. Mr. Saito was originally an administrative officer and took the position at the association after retirement. He has an abundance of practical experience in the maintenance and management of national parks in Japan, and will be speaking at the Construction and Planning Agency at 10:00 A.M. on December 2nd, sharing the experience of how Japan’s government and residents jointly searched for the best way to manage national parks. As of March 2015, Japan has a total of 32 national parks, 56 quasi-national parks, and 313 provincial natural parks, covering an area of roughly 5.43 million hectares, which is roughly 14.38% of Japan’s total land area, in which national parks and quasi-national parks account for roughly 9.16% of the land. National parks are managed by the Ministry of the Environment, including policy formulation and setting conservation goals. At present, natural parks not only actively protect natural resources, but are also visited by roughly one billion visitors a year.