Taiwan ranked third in Asia and 32nd worldwide in the 2009 Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) for emissions last year, a report by Climate Action Network Europe (CAN-Europe) and Germanwatch, two non-governmental organizations, showed.
The report's evaluation of Taiwan was based on research by Lee Chien-ming (李堅明), an assistant professor at National Taipei University's Institute of Natural Resource Management, a Council for Economic Planning and Development official said yesterday.
“Taiwan was included in the global analysis for the first time in 2008. The report can help the country better understand the effectiveness of its policy on cutting carbon-dioxide emissions and boosting energy savings,” the official said.
Citing a lack of will among countries to engage themselves more strongly to prevent climate change, the report did not award the top three places in the global rankings to any country.
That would put Taiwan in 29th position among the 57 countries in the list, which together were responsible for 90 percent of annual carbon-dioxide emissions worldwide.
Sweden, Germany and France placed fourth, fifth and sixth respectively. Sweden, Germany and Iceland ranked in the top three in 2007, it said.
“Not a single country is to be judged as satisfactory with regard to protecting the climate. The specific criterion for this judgment is that, compared with 1990, no country is yet on the path that would be necessary to stay within the 2 degrees limit,” the report said.
Taiwan's third place spot in Asia put it ahead of Singapore (38), South Korea (41), Japan (43) and China (49), but behind India (7) and Indonesia (27).
Among the 12 different indicators which were classified into three categories — emissions trends, emissions levels and climate policy — to measure its performance, Taiwan was given full marks for renewable energy emissions but ranked poorly in primary energy units per capita, carbon dioxide per primary energy unit, electricity, and manufacturing and construction.
Looking at the other end of the index, Saudi Arabia placed last in the evaluation chart, the CCPI report said, adding that Austria (50), Russia (54), the US (58) and Canada (59) also had worrying results, performing poorly in terms of current emissions levels, emissions trends and in the evaluation of their climate policies.
Introduced to a professional audience for the first time at the 11th Global Climate Summit in Montreal in 2005, the CCPI is presented every year at the UN Climate Change Conference to draw as much attention as possible in the observed countries and promote discussions on climate change.
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