The 21st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was held in Paris from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11 last year. The resulting Paris Climate Agreement has marked a milestone in international efforts to combat climate change, and are to be opened for signature in April.
This new climate agreement adopts the “bottom up” approach enshrined in the Copenhagen Accord in 2009. It requires nations to publicly outline what post-2020 climate actions they intend to take, known as their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). With the submission of NDCs by 188 parties, the commitment to achieve specific national emissions reduction targets has become almost universal.
Taiwan voluntarily published its NDCs before the Paris talks. The government last year passed a Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Management Act (溫室氣體減量及管理法), which aims for a 50 percent greenhouse gas reduction by 2050 compared with 2005 levels.
As a non-member state, Taiwan was excluded from the Paris negotiations, but it would be of interest to discuss the legality of Taiwan’s national reduction commitment at an international level and other alternative participatory approaches.
However, are these NDCs legally binding? The answer is ambiguous. At least two possible arguments can be made to claim that the current NDCs are legally binding: One, they are authentic interpretations of the Paris Agreement, once ratified, would be legally binding, and two, the NDCs are binding unilateral acts of states under international law.
In the case concerning nuclear tests (New Zealand versus France, 1974), the International Court of Justice recognized that declarations made by way of unilateral acts, concerning legal or factual situations, might have the effect of creating legal obligations. So Taiwan could consider this second argument and bind itself by the initially voluntary statement.
Article 4 (16) of the Paris Agreement states that parties, including regional economic integration organizations and their member states, communicate with the secretariat of the agreement regarding their successive NDCs and the emission level allocated to each party within the relevant time period.
Based on this article, it is possible for Taiwan to join a regional economic integration organization’s mitigation goal first, and then the regional plan would be collectively integrated into the whole Paris Agreement.
APEC, for example, despite several joint crediting and measurement mechanisms for greenhouse gases that have been established, still does not have a common mitigation goal. Thus, Taiwan, as an APEC member, could propose an APEC mitigation framework at the upcoming energy ministerial meetings, and, certainly, there is no reason that the regional plan incorporating Taiwan’s mitigation target should be treated differently under the Paris Climate Agreement.
International environmental governance is changing. Most notable are the declining importance of the state and the rise of multi-actor governance networks. Ongoing policy discussions show that not only nation-states negotiate international treaties, but a plurality of lower-level “climate contracts” between private, non-profit sectors and municipal governments could provide flexible and tailored solutions to address global warming.
Ultimately, exclusion from the Paris Agreement meetings offers Taiwan insightful lessons and direction for future climate action.
Yang Chung-han is a doctoral candidate researching international environmental law at the University of Cambridge and a member of the Taipei Bar Association.
In the event of a war with China, Taiwan has some surprisingly tough defenses that could make it as difficult to tackle as a porcupine: A shoreline dotted with swamps, rocks and concrete barriers; conscription for all adult men; highways and airports that are built to double as hardened combat facilities. This porcupine has a soft underbelly, though, and the war in Iran is exposing it: energy. About 39,000 ships dock at Taiwan’s ports each year, more than the 30,000 that transit the Strait of Hormuz. About one-fifth of their inbound tonnage is coal, oil, refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG),
On Monday, the day before Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) departed on her visit to China, the party released a promotional video titled “Only with peace can we ‘lie flat’” to highlight its desire to have peace across the Taiwan Strait. However, its use of the expression “lie flat” (tang ping, 躺平) drew sarcastic comments, with critics saying it sounded as if the party was “bowing down” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Amid the controversy over the opposition parties blocking proposed defense budgets, Cheng departed for China after receiving an invitation from the CCP, with a meeting with
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is leading a delegation to China through Sunday. She is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing tomorrow. That date coincides with the anniversary of the signing of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which marked a cornerstone of Taiwan-US relations. Staging their meeting on this date makes it clear that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intends to challenge the US and demonstrate its “authority” over Taiwan. Since the US severed official diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979, it has relied on the TRA as a legal basis for all
The two major opposition parties, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), jointly announced on Tuesday last week that former TPP lawmaker Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) would be their joint candidate for Chiayi mayor, following polling conducted earlier this month. It is the first case of blue-white (KMT-TPP) cooperation in selecting a joint candidate under an agreement signed by their chairpersons last month. KMT and TPP supporters have blamed their 2024 presidential election loss on failing to decide on a joint candidate, which ended in a dramatic breakdown with participants pointing fingers, calling polls unfair, sobbing and walking
RSS