Taiwan, excluded from climate summit, sets up 'war room' to watch talks

Taiwan has set up a "war room" to watch the live stream from next week's COP29 climate summit given it is not allowed to attend for political reasons, Environment Minister Peng Chi-ming said on Friday.

Democratically-governed Taiwan is excluded from almost all international bodies due to objections from China, which views the island as its own territory not a country and claims the right to be able to speak for it on the international stage, a position that infuriates the government in Taipei.

Speaking to foreign media at his ministry in Taipei, Peng said it was a shame that Taiwan, as a major producer of semiconductors and with its own climate worries, could not officially go to the climate summit in Azerbaijan's capital Baku.

"We cannot join the negotiations, which I think is a pity for us," he told foreign reporters in Taipei.

"I am not allowed to join this meeting because of political reasons. But we are a good friend of global society. I will not bother them because I want to join," added Peng, a meteorologist by training who has attended 11 previous COPs before he entered government in May.

There will be some lower level officials and think-tank people from Taiwan going, but otherwise the ministry will gather in a specially set up conference room to watch the summit, he said.

"Here we will have a war room," added Peng, who has a doctorate in atmospheric physics. "From noon to night we will have people watching all of it."

Taiwan has a goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, and President Lai Ching-te has set up a climate change response committee to map out government plans.

Peng said that with the world warming the expectation for subtropical Taiwan was for stronger, more damaging typhoons, or for typhoons to skip the island totally, which would be equally bad given its reliance on the storms to fill reservoirs.

In 2021 Taiwan faced its most serious drought in history after no typhoons hit the previous year.

"Taiwan both loves and hates typhoons," the minister said.