Water Resource Utilization in Taiwan’s Municipalities: A Comparative Perspective

Taiwan’s administrative divisions have been changed several times throughout history. At the end of 2010, Taiwan Area (including Taiwan Island and its off-shore islands) is divided administratively into five municipalities (直轄市), three cities (市), and 14 counties (縣). And in 2014, Taoyuan County was designated a municipality because its population is over 200 million persons. With this administration division, this paper is attempted to discuss the issue of water resource utilization with a comparative perspective in the six municipalities from north to south: Taipei City (台北市), New Taipei City (新北市), Taoyuan City (桃園市), Taichung City (台中市), Tainan City (台南市), and Kaohsiung City (高雄市). Statistics of population and fresh water provision will be utilized to analyze the related issues. It is hoped that through this comparative study, the strength and limitation of each municipality in terms of water resource utilization can be illustrated and evaluated.