Taiwan unveiled the Pan-Pacific Adaptation on Climate Change (PPACC), an initiative aimed at helping the region deal with the effects of climate change, in Paris on Sunday.
Several nations in the region are facing similar challenges as a result of climate change and Taiwan has the technology to deal with those issues, Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) Minister Wei Kuo-yen (魏國彥) said at the launch.
The Asia-Pacific region needs the PPACC to help it prepare for climate change, Wei said.
The PPACC is to cooperate with the Center for Collective Intelligence (CCI) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, the EPA said.
Taiwan’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Management Office has also signed a letter of intent with the CCI’s Climate CoLab on future cooperation, it said.
CCI director Thomas Malone said at the launch that Climate CoLab’s partnership with the EPA is its first in the Asia-Pacific region, which is at high risk from the effects of climate change because of its dense population.
The EPA said its office would work with Climate CoLab, which brings together people from around the world to work on climate change issues, to hold a series of events and contests to solicit ideas from the public.
Wei is in Paris for the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, to which Taiwan is not a party.
He is the first Taiwanese minister to take part in a UN climate change summit and is scheduled to hold bilateral talks with environmental protection officials from other nations during his visit.
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The Council of Agriculture yesterday signed a Taiwan-Australia Agricultural Cooperation Implementation clause to open a new export market for the nation’s pineapple crop. The clause is an addition to existing cooperation measures, it said. China on Friday last week abruptly announced that it would suspend pineapple imports from Taiwan starting on Monday, on grounds that it had on multiple occasions discovered “harmful organisms” in shipments of the fruit. The public and private sectors have since joined hands to purchase the local fruit to help the nation’s pineapple farmers. Canberra has requested that all pineapples for export to Australia have their crown buds removed,
DECADES OF INFLUENCE: Over the past 20 years, China has made inroads with Aborigines, funding political campaigns and trips, a legislator said Lawmakers have called on the National Security Bureau to investigate claims of pervasive Chinese influence among Aboriginal communities. Legislators pointed to a surge in communist propaganda and Chinese-funded projects over the past few years, which they say are aimed at infiltrating and buying political influence among Aboriginal communities. “China has for decades carried out wide-ranging ‘united front’ tactics and propaganda campaigns targeting Aborigines,” said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Ying (陳瑩), a member of the Puyuma community in Taitung County. “Now, they are influencing elections for local councilors and village chiefs, offering money for candidates to mount their campaigns, and to
DISSATISFACTION? If the referendums collect more than 700,000 signatures each, they would have gotten the most signatures in the shortest time, the party said The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) two referendum petitions — one on banning the importation of pork with traces of ractopamine and the other on holding referendums on the same day as national elections — had as of Thursday gathered 691,398 and 674,497 signatures respectively, the party said yesterday. If the petitions collect more than 700,000 signatures apiece, they would have garnered the most signatures in the shortest time since the Referendum Act (公民投票法) was amended in 2017, party officials said. The KMT proposed the “anti-ractopamine pork” or “food safety” referendum just days after President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) announcement on Aug. 28 last
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