At UN Climate Conference, Placating China More Important Than Including a Big Polluter
(CNSNews.com) – The United Nations and its member states may be engrossed in the drive to achieve a new global climate agreement in Paris this week, but not to the extent that they are willing to challenge China’s decades-old refusal to allow Taiwan to be treated as a normal country.
Taiwan – a thriving, independent democracy of 23 million which Beijing regards as a renegade province – has been excluded from participation as a state in the U.N. climate conference despite the much-touted urgency about reaching a global deal.
Rather than have a national delegation at the talks, as almost 200 other countries do, Taiwan has sent a team that is attending in the capacity of a non-governmental organization, unable to participate in the talks officially – or even as an observer state.
Taiwan’s exclusion comes despite the fact it is a relatively big emitter of the “greenhouse gases” blamed for climate change.
According to the latest available data [1] from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Taiwan is the 25th biggest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2) resulting from “fossil-fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring.”
That puts it ahead of more than half of the specified developed nations whose contributions to CO2 emissions were considered grievous enough to have emission-reduction targets set under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
On the other hand, Taiwan as an island nation is allegedly susceptible to rising sea levels which the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change blames on climate change, particularly in lower-lying western parts of the island where the population centers are located.
The COP21 talks in Paris – the 21st Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – aim to forge a new global agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol – by a Friday deadline.
Eager to be part of the international effort, the Taiwanese government, like other countries, offered a climate action plan, a so-called “intended nationally determined contribution,” ahead of the conference.
But it was not allowed to formally submit its INDC – which as a result does not appear on the UNFCCC’s INDC list [2] – and the U.N. has not permitted it to take a seat at the negotiating table.
In 1971 the U.N. General Assembly expelled Taiwan and gave its seat the communist People’s Republic of China. Taiwan’s attempts since 1993 to rejoin the world body have been blocked by Beijing and its allies.
China says that granting Taiwan legitimacy in the international arena would violate its “one China” principle and – in a phrase used when Taiwan tried to participate in a previous U.N. climate conference, in Copenhagen six years ago – “hurt the feelings of the 1.3 billion Chinese people.”
(So desperate was Taiwan to join the UNFCCC that year, it urged the U.S. to support a bid for it to be allowed to do so as an “emissions entity” rather than a state, according to a cable from the de-facto U.S. Embassy in Taipei, leaked by Wikileaks in 2011. Taiwan participates in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation as an “economic entity,” although at Beijing’s insistence Taiwan’s president is not allowed to attend APEC summits.)
“Taiwan is ready, willing and able to make meaningful contributions to tackle climate change as an observer to the UNFCCC,” Taiwan’s foreign ministry in Taipei pointed out in a recent edition of its Taiwan Review publication. “As climate change is a global problem, all the nations of the world must work together to achieve a global solution.”
‘Artificially restricting Taiwan’s participation’
Speaking at a forum on the sidelines of the COP21 on Monday, the head of Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), Wei Kuo-yen, called again for the UNFCCC to include it in the fight to combat climate change.
“Obviously, Taiwan has disappeared from the INDC map,” Taiwan’s official Central News Agency quoted him as saying.
“With such intentional blindness in the international community, it is ironic that one cannot see the real existence of Taiwan in the U.N.’s bright meeting rooms.”
Despite the UNFCCC snub, Wei launched an initiative in Paris last weekend aimed at helping countries in the region deal with the effects of climate change – the Pan-Pacific Adaptation on Climate Change (PPACC).
Gerrit van der Wees, editor of Taiwan Communiqué, published by the Formosan Association for Public Affairs in Washington, called it “incomprehensible that Taiwan is being kept out of the official deliberations” in Paris.
“It is a small step forward that a delegation from Taiwan headed by the EPA Minister is able to attend, but they are still relegated to the sidelines, and do not have a seat at the table,” he said on Tuesday.
“This is particularly astonishing in view of the fact that Taiwan is a highly-developed nation of 23 million people that can contribute significantly to finding solutions.”
Van der Wees pointed to Wei’s unveiling of the PPACC initiative, but said he had been compelled to do this on the sidelines of the conference, rather than at the conference itself.
“The U.S. has been supportive of Taiwan’s increased participation in such organizations, but regrettably still follows the line that Taiwan should only participate in international organizations that do not require statehood,” he said.
“The U.S. is thus artificially restricting Taiwan’s participation and also implies that Taiwan is not a state,” van der Wees said.
“This is an outdated position that should be discarded right away in favor of support for Taiwan’s membership in all organizations, including the United Nations and the [World Health Organization].”
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