Launching a cooperation task force with Climate Youth Japan
International cooperation is a unique opportunity to identify common interests between cultures and societies, in order to build on it to allow learning from our differences. Here at Taiwan Youth Climate Coalition, we strongly believe in the collective intelligence possibilities of working with other countries. And in the history of Taiwan, no country has left a bigger cultural mark than Japan. Funnily enough, it is now working the other way around, as Japan is starting to develop a hype around one of the most famous Taiwanese products : Bubble tea.
As we all (should) know though, that can mean big trouble for the environment. The plastic cups and straws are becoming a major garbage problem in Japan and the stake is for Japanese Youths to educate its population on eco-friendly options. A problem that is not new to Taiwan. We therefore started a task force on the 06/26/2020, with the Climate Youth Japan to exchange best practices and ideas on the matter.
Japan and Taiwan, a long love story
Japanese presence in Taiwan lasted from 1895 to 1945. The Japanese colonized the island after their victory over the Qing dynasty. As a result, they contributed a lot to developing the island and its culture until they were chased out by the retreating armies of Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China in 1945. To this day, many grandparents of the youth generation still speak at least a beat of Japanese, and all the youth shared a common pop culture with japan: manga, Pokemon, food, etc.
Links between Taiwan and Japan are still strong to this day. 2 million of Japanese chose Taiwan for their holiday plans in 2019, and lots of Taiwanese chose Japan for the same reason. The islands are close both geographically and culturally.
Bubble Trouble : What we hope to achieve
And our countries are also really close on something really important to the both of our people : food and beverage. As Bubble tea and tapioca products are gaining huge popularity in Japan, we hope to benefit from each other’s knowledge on plastic garbage stakes and management to inspire new actions on both sides. We also hope to provide japan with information and knowledge of eco-friendly bubble tea solutions, to help them gain some time and get our perspective.
What’s interesting is to notice that the first talks we had have already started to generate some new ideas to go further after this first project. We might work on helping each other map our cities with eco-friendly shops and restaurants to help Japanese tourists in Taiwan and Taiwanese tourists in Japan eat out in respect to the environment. A first example of unexpected ideas that come up, as soon as we connect !
Next steps
A new meeting was held last Sunday to discuss our common stakes and identify ideas for actions. We are thrilled to start this collaboration and can’t wait to let you know more about our advances ! We will disclose our latest advancements soon. Stay tuned :)
