Sustainable development of water resources is the key element of economic growth in every country around the world. In Taiwan, hydrology, geographical condition and industrial development have put significant pressure on the usages of water resources, causing that the supply of surface water cannot satisfy the water demand. Furthermore, due to climate change, drought and flood events occurred more frequently and caused social and economic loss in recent years. Therefore, exploitation and conservation of groundwater resources are crucial to water resources management and development in Taiwan. However, imbalance among industries development, land use and water supply leads to the overexploitation in some regions, which results in the problem of groundwater salinization, land subsidence, flooding, and coastal erosion, and etc. In addition, certain regions encounter natural contamination of poor groundwater quality because of physical geology, or water pollution coming from wastewater discharge from agriculture, industry and domestic releases. All the situations have a great impact on sustainable use of water resource. The two major difficulties of groundwater resources management in Taiwan are the imbalance between recharge and exploitation and no simultaneous consideration to both water quality and quantity. Agencies in Taiwan have established groundwater monitoring database including hydrological and geological information, water level, and water quality. Groundwater information platform also had been established to assist in groundwater exploitation planning and sustainable development. However, groundwater resource management still encounters several issues currently: (i) governing authorities and responsibilities of groundwater are dispersed in different agencies; (ii) evaluation of water quality and quantity are not considered simultaneously; (iii) industrial development and climate change impact should be addressed; (iv) an integrated groundwater resource management guideline is needed. To deal with these issues, Taiwan EPA complies the “Sustainable Strategy of Groundwater Management Program”, which contains four main tasks, including the proposition of sustainable management strategy of groundwater source, the improvement of groundwater management data analysis and capacity of decision supporting system, the proposal of groundwater adaptive strategy under climate change and the promotion of groundwater resource management policy, to accomplish the goal of sustainable groundwater management.

Groundwater management, Climate change, Sustainable development