Jaushieh Joseph Wu
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Republic of China (Taiwan)
March 10, 2021
(As Prepared for Delivery)
Hello and welcome to the meeting!
I am delighted to be speaking here today at the GCTF seminar on Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters. After Taiwan and the US launched the GCTF in 2015, we expanded our membership to include Japan as a full partner in 2019. Today's seminar is particularly meaningful. It is not only the first GCTF event of 2021, but also the first time for the UK to join us as a cohost country. Welcome on board!
Today's seminar is organized to commemorate the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. I would like to pay tribute to the victims of that disaster and express solidarity with our Japanese friends who lost loved ones in the catastrophe.
Like many other countries, particularly those in the Asia-Pacific, Taiwan and Japan are prone to natural disasters. Since the destruction caused by the 921 earthquake in Taiwan and 311 earthquake in Japan, we have both doubled our efforts to enhance our capacity to mitigate natural and manmade disasters. Of course, developing disaster management practices and building a culture of disaster preparedness are neither quick nor easy. Yet we have learned valuable lessons along the way. Through this seminar, we aim to facilitate a dialogue to share these experiences and build cooperation to strengthen our resilience to disasters.
Because of COVID-19, the work mentioned above has been delayed. But the pandemic has also brought an opportunity for Taiwan to prove that we can help even in difficult times. In that spirit, GCTF is an incubator for international collaboration to take on current challenges and head off future crises. I am proud to say that the GCTF has received wide recognition from our partners around the world for its effectiveness in promoting cooperation and improving well-being.
Taiwan has demonstrated that it is willing and able to contribute to ensuring a better future for mankind. Today's seminar provides us with an excellent sharing platform. I encourage all participants to exchange observations on how your countries prepare for and recover from disasters. Through these discussions, we can identify effective public-private partnerships to build resilience to natural disasters, and explore areas for future cooperation.
Let me once again welcome all of you. I wish you all a productive and fruitful discussion.
Thank you!