Taiwan sought assistance in a proposed bid to join the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as an “emissions entity,” a leaked US cable shows.
WikiLeaks on Thursday last week published a confidential cable dated Sept. 9, 2009, from the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), which showed President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and various officials had all directly raised the matter of Taiwan’s participation in the UNFCCC before the bid was made public with the AIT.
The cable shows that Taiwan was hoping the US could play a “helpful” role in supporting UNFCCC participation for the country, and proposed a strategy whereby Taiwan should take part in the mechanism as an “emissions entity” as opposed to a “state.”
This strategy was largely based on Taiwan’s success in joining international fisheries agreements as a “fishing entity” and aimed to circumvent the rule that only states could join the UNFCCC, the AIT cable quoted Paul Chang (章文樑), then the director-general of the Department of International Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as saying.
Environmental Protection Administration Minister Stephen Shen (沈世宏) told the AIT that Beijing objected to Taiwan’s participation in the UNFCCC because China did not have specific carbon emission reduction targets while Taiwan did, and that Taiwan’s positive stance and active participation in the UNFCCC would thus be an “embarrassment” to China, the cable says.
In a non-paper submitted to the AIT, Taipei said climate change was a transborder issue that required a global solution and it was therefore appropriate to define contributors to the problem (and solution) as “emissions entities,” rather than necessarily as states, the cable says.
The cable shows that the AIT was supportive of the “emissions entity” strategy to be used in Taiwan’s participation in international organizations “outside the UN system.”
“Based on precedent, Taiwan’s reliance on the ‘fishing entity’ argument may not work in the UN context ... Indeed, when Taiwan has attempted to join a UN fisheries agency as a ‘fishing entity,’ China has blocked Taiwan’s participation,” the AIT cable says.
“In cases where Taiwan has joined international organizations under apolitical nomenclature, such as an ‘economic entity’ in APEC or a ‘separate customs territory’ in the WTO, the apparent ‘red line’ of membership in a UN organization was not crossed,” it says.
The AIT said the “emissions entity” strategy could work for Taiwan in the context of international environmental organizations outside the UN system and was worth supporting to further Taiwan’s meaningful participation in global environmental forums.
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