While the nation has shown significant progress in trying to curb its emissions of gases that exacerbate the greenhouse effect, it is postponing the introduction of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
The CDM is an aspect of the Kyoto Protocol that allows industrialized countries to invest in emissions-reducing projects in developing countries in exchange for a raise in their country's emissions quotas.
The protocol also aims to reduce the possibility that industrialized countries could invest in projects in developing countries exclusively and avoid working on reducing emissions at home.
To avoid this, the protocol specifies that an unused quota gained by a signatory through international investments may only be partially saved to help meet future goals.
Minister of the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) Chang Kow-lung (
"Taiwan is not a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol, which relieves the country from the burden of meeting a certain quota within a designated period of time," Chang said.
"Taiwan does not gain any substantial benefits, politically or economically, worth voluntarily abiding by a mechanism that continues to pose such a high risk," he added.
Chang said that countries qualified to engage in carbon trading must also be a co-signatory of the protocol.
Carbon trading is a system in which carbon is given an economic value based on the ability of the country owning it to store it or prevent it from being released into the atmosphere.
Under the system, people, companies and nations are all able to trade carbon. Those buying carbon have the right to burn it.
Chang said that this qualification requirement essentially ruled out the possibility of trading carbon with most any country in the world.
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