Cool Planet

Claire Roby, Clean Air-Cool Planet

By Claire Roby
Carbon Accounting Coordinator
Clean Air-Cool Planet

I’ve returned to Taiwan after studying here five years ago to find an incredibly warm December, and it is not difficult to imagine that global climate change is in the forefront of many people’s minds.  The Copenhagen talks have been featured prominently in the papers for the two weeks that I have been here.  Each morning, the local English language paper has four to six articles on the progress of the talks and a discussion of either Taiwan’s contributions to the problem or the future impacts the island can expect.  When I explain my work to old friends or people I meet on the street, they always know that the summit is happening.

That is interesting, since Taiwan has no seat at the negotiations.  They are a top 25 emitter and the island will suffer dramatic impacts of rising sea levels, but they are not recognized as a sovereign state by the United Nations and thus are only visitors in Copenhagen.  That also means that it is up for debate as to how negotiated agreements apply locally.  The government has chosen to abide by any agreement and to adopt ISO 14064 as a standard for greenhouse gas quantification, reporting, and verification—a very promising start.

Yesterday afternoon, Anne Stephenson and I met with representatives of Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Agency and one of their primary consulting partners to learn about their inventory efforts and to offer our experience.  They have developed a protocol and reporting registry, with 34 companies having completed inventories to date.  While their system is currently voluntary, they are learning from international efforts so that they can move quickly.  For example, they are already thinking about stringent verification mechanisms and provisions to count community based offsets.

Their progress is both admiral and quite understandable.  Taiwan needs any diplomatic advantage it can leverage, regardless of the long term sovereignty debate.  The more international appreciation we can offer any state that achieves reduction goals, the better outcome we can expect—particularly from historically sidelined states like Taiwan.