Taiwan needs to adopt a top-down approach in dealing with reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the Taiwan branch of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development said yesterday.
Reduction of emissions was an issue which every member of the global village would eventually have to face, branch secretary-general Niven Huang (
Huang's comments follow Friday's annual ministerial meeting of the 188 parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Milan, Italy.
Attended by more than 5,000 delegates, including 95 ministers, the Ninth Conference of the Parties sought to stimulate further action among national governments, civic groups and the private sector and to prepare for the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol.
"The delay [in adopting the protocol] is a good chance for Taiwan, which is not party to the protocol, to review its own circumstances, analyze risks and opportunities and come up with appropriate strategies dealing with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions," Huang said.
He said that in the last decade the government has not come up with a clear, long-term or consistent policy on the issue.
The government had instead promoted other issues, such as energy efficiency and voluntary inventories on greenhouse gas emissions, but most of these efforts had not been integrated, Huang said.
"What Taiwan's industries are looking forward to is a high-level agency that can be more powerful in integrating diverse sectors ranging from the environment, energy, industrial development and even finance," Huang said.
Taiwan has ranked among the top 20 countries in foreign direct investment for several years, Huang said, adding that after the Kyoto Protocol comes into force, Taiwan's overseas markets will be considerably affected.
The nation is also an influential source of investment in China, whose economic growth will be affected by international protocols limiting greenhouse gas emissions one or two decades from now.
Huang said greenhouse emissions are the only environmental pollutants whose global emission will be jointly regulated, and Taiwan would be affected by the international protocols.
"But sadly, even at the National Council for Sustainable Development, greenhouse emission reduction has not been seriously addressed yet," Huang said.
The government's attitude toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions has been conservative.
Since 1995, it has participated as an observer under the umbrella of an NGO consisting of representatives from the Environmental Protection Administration and the Industrial Technology Research Institute, the latter of which is partly financed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
Efforts to date have focused on gathering information rather than developing an integrated policy for industry.
The Kyoto Protocol was drawn up at the Third Conference of the Parties in Japan in 1997. It aims to reduce by 5.2 percent the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by developed countries at 1990 levels within the five-year period of 2008 to 2012.
The protocol will be in force when 55 countries, representing at least 55 percent of developed countries' greenhouse gas emissions (as calculated for 1990), have ratified it.
At this time, 120 countries representing more than two-thirds of the world's population have ratified the protocol. But these countries are only responsible for 44.2 percent of the threshold figure.
Ratification by Russia is essential, as it is responsible for 17.4 percent of the 1990 figure. However, Russia's ambiguous stance on the Kyoto Protocol will not be clarified until its presidential election next year.
The US and Australia have also expressed considerable antipathy toward the draft protocol.
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