Taiwan and China will eventually include the issue of environmental protection in their institutionalized talks, Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) said yesterday.
“Following the agreements on transportation and economic affairs, both sides could gradually move to an agenda of environmental protection,” Chiang said at the first Cross-Strait Environmental Summit.
Chiang said he hopes the foundation and its counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), could sign an agreement on environmental protection in the next stage of their negotiations.
The two organizations have sealed 17 agreements in the four years since they resumed high-level talks.
The two-day summit in Taipei has attracted about 150 environmental experts from Taiwan, China and the US, who are discussing air pollution, waste management and the potential for environmental cooperation across the Taiwan Strait, among other topics.
Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences chairman Wang Yuqing (王玉慶) said both sides could work together to develop alternative energy and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
“We will see a thriving green industry in the next decade,” Wang said, adding that China welcomed Taiwanese investment in its 12th Five-Year Guidelines.
China’s green industry has a business potential of up to 3.1 trillion yuan (US$491 billion), according to the Taiwan Environmental Sustainable Development Foundation and the Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences, which are co-hosting the summit.
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