This year's U.N. COP29 conference has focused on climate financing. Taiwan is excluded from attending in an official capacity but Taipei still provides funding for global environmental efforts. To find out more, TaiwanPlus speaks to National Tsing Hua University law professor Fan Chien-te.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Can you explain a little bit about the focus of COP29?
00:03What exactly is climate financing?
00:05When we talk about finance for the climate,
00:08usually we would like to subcategorize that into three main streams.
00:14First of all, it's the governmental contributions.
00:18We urge the US or EU or those rich countries to pledge for the money contribution.
00:25And secondly, when we talk about finance,
00:28it's about what the World Bank or multilateral development
00:34are spreading around the world that they are aiming to do.
00:38So usually we ask those multilateral development banks
00:44to allocate certain parts of their funding to gear up or support the climate action.
00:51And finally, what's the focus of this COP has been
00:56the Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
00:59We refer to that as a market mechanism
01:03which aims to drive the private sources of money into the climate actions.
01:09How will the Article 6 mechanisms work between countries in the future?
01:13What's your outlook on this?
01:15We would like to take advantage of this Article 6
01:18to support those fragile countries, our developing countries,
01:25in terms of the carbon project development
01:28that could lower the overhead of a project development.
01:33In the meanwhile, we are able to invite the private sectors
01:38who are required to clean up their supply chain.
01:42So they would like to earn some green credit out of this as well.
01:47Taiwan is excluded from UN-organized events like COP.
01:50Does that mean Taiwan is exempt from any commitments to tackling climate change
01:54like talks of financial assistance to vulnerable countries?
01:58Well, legally speaking, yes, we are not allowed to contribute even though we try.
02:05Truly, we try but fail because we've been blocked by China.
02:09But still, last year in Dubai,
02:13Taiwan still formed a fund to support the island countries.
02:18So we are still doing that.
02:20And then turn to the principle I just talked about,
02:23how the rich companies do in their own way, right?
02:27Not through the UNFCCC.
02:29So you can see we've done a lot already as well.
02:32So even though we are not allowed legally to take part or attend this COP
02:38as a normal participant,
02:40but still we grant a lot of money and support to a lot of the developing countries.