Against the backdrop of the risks posed to Taiwan by extreme weather events and the possibility of armed conflict with China, water supply systems have dual strategic and security importance for the Taiwanese government, making their protection and resilience directly related to the operational defense of the territory.
The year 2021 was a marker of climate change for Taiwan: the island did not suffer a single typhoon, whereas three to four occur in normal times. This was a first since 1964. While typhoons have devastating effects on housing and infrastructure, they do bring their share of torrential rains. These contribute to 50% of the country’s mobilizable raw water resources. Rainfall remains three times higher than the world average, but, year after year, Taiwan is seeing profound changes and is now faced with chronic water shortages related to its uses, despite a significant set of hydraulic reservoirs. The latter were designed and conceived as strategic arteries intended to capture the water resources that the island needs.
These technical feats are particularly due to the Japanese engineer Yoichi Hatta when Formosa was still under the control of the Empire of the Rising Sun. His main achievements were the Wushantou reservoir, which was considered the largest and most modern in Asia when it was inaugurated in 1930. The Japanese engineer is also responsible for the 15,000 kilometers of irrigation canals in the Chianan plain, which transformed the daily life of the island a century ago by allowing water from heavy rainfall to be channeled, to the great benefit of agriculture, particularly rice and sugar cane cultivation. (1).
The high water footprint of agriculture and semiconductors
The agricultural sector still accounts for two-thirds of the water consumed today in Taiwan, in particular to allow two annual rice harvests, to grow tropical fruits, etc., against a backdrop of an urgent need for food security for its 24 million inhabitants. The subject would indeed be most critical in the event of a blockade, if China were forced to follow this naval and air strategy. However, it is clear that China is increasing the maneuvers and exercises of its air force and navy around the island, regularly penetrating Taiwan’s airspace and territorial waters.
In terms of water resources, the problem is that this agriculture has never really reformed itself. Its actors are old, the levels of leaks in the irrigation networks are high, the crops produced are very water-intensive, and too few smart irrigation techniques have been implemented over the last thirty years. It took the awakening of 2021 for the authorities to demand that the water footprint of agriculture decrease. This will clearly offer many opportunities to Western companies, particularly Israeli ones. Israel is indeed a pioneering state in terms of water-efficient irrigation, where the reuse of wastewater provides 40% of the needs of the agricultural world and where 90% of the water is reused in a closed circuit.
But there is another area in which Israel and Taiwan will expand their cooperation in the future: the efficiency of water used in the semiconductor industry. The two countries already work closely on this issue. On the one hand, Taiwan is responsible for 60% of global semiconductor production with its flagship TSMC. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company itself produces 90% of the chips essential to the operation of cell phones, cars and military equipment. In contrast to this scale-up nation As Taiwan is perceived in the United States, another key player in the semiconductor market with 12% of global production, Israel is seen as a start-up nationalso very involved in this technology. Hence the partnership agreements signed between the two countries in this area, but there is no doubt that these will gradually extend to smart water industrial management — how to better use water in industrial processes — as well as on desalination techniques in which the Israeli state has become a master.
Manufacturing chips requires the use of ultrapure water produced, most often from a public water supply network. To provide 1 m3 of water that is a thousand times purer than human drinking water from the tap, 1.4 to 1.6 m3 of water are needed. In addition, the water distributed in the factory is also used for air conditioning equipment, as well as for cooling server centers, which contribute to etching two-nanometer chips, making this activity with very high added value so rich and specific. This explains why TSMC consumes the equivalent of 80 Olympic swimming pools per day and why its demand for water is constantly increasing. (2).
A matter of defense and national security
Faced with the scarcity of its resources against a backdrop of climate change, Taiwan has made water a strategic and security issue. To achieve this, the government is focusing on raising awareness and training its population to be more economical in its domestic, agricultural and industrial uses. It is one of the most educated in the world, as evidenced by the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) ranking of OECD countries, which Taiwanese students regularly outperform. In 2022, they were third in mathematics, fourth in science and fifth in reading. You only have to visit the drinking water museum in the capital Taipei to understand that water issues in the country are now addressed from a very young age.
