The government will try to participate in the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) “in a way that will see the country gain more respect and uphold its sovereignty and dignity,” a senior official said yesterday.
Environment Protection Administration (EPA) Deputy Minister Chiou Wen-yan (邱文彥), who was named yesterday to head a group of 20 to 30 officials and academics going to the Copenhagen summit in December, made the remarks in a telephone interview.
“As Taiwan is an independent, sovereign country, there is no doubt that the [past] format was unacceptable … We hope to find a way in which Taiwan’s dignity and sovereignty is respected and it will not be considered by the international community as part of China’s territory,” Chiou said.
As Taiwan is neither a UN member nor a signatory to the UNFCCC, its representatives have attended previous UNFCCC sessions as members of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), or by joining the team from the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), a state-owned research facility in Hsinchu.
The four groups that have obtained access to the event, however, have been listed as based in either “Hsinchu, China” or “Taipei, China.”
On the conference’s official Web site, ITRI was listed as based in “Hsinchu, China,” while the Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association, the Environmental Quality Protection Foundation and the Taiwan Institute for Sustainable Energy are listed as being from “Taipei, China.”
Vice Premier Eric Chu (朱立倫) yesterday called a meeting to explore strategies on meaningful participation in UN agencies.
“At the Copenhagen conference we will lay more emphasis on Taiwan’s intention to participate in the UNFCCC and the contribution we can make to the world instead of the country’s name and status. We know the international political reality facing Taiwan,” Chu said.
A civil expert who has frequently attended UN conferences on climate change over the past 14 years said on condition of anonymity that the country’s NGOs were registered as “Taiwan” in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but their names were changed to “Taiwan, Province of China” at some point.
The government said last month that Taiwan planned to participate in the UNFCCC and the UN International Civil Aviation Organization, but said that the name it would use had not been decided yet.
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