The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday released a bilingual video calling for global support of Taiwan’s participation in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to coincide with the start of COP29 in Azerbaijan.
In line with previous practice, this year MOFA has made a video titled Our Pale Blue Dot, a reference to scientist Carl Sagan’s 1994 book on the future of humans in space, the ministry said in a news release.
The two-minute-30-second clip includes images and videos taken by Formosat-5, Taiwan’s first domestically developed and produced Earth observation satellite, and showcases the nation’s achievements in helping its allies combat climate change, MOFA said.
Photo: screen grab from a video on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Web site
The aim of the video is to call on the international community to accept Taiwan in its push for meaningful participation in the UNFCCC, it added.
There is also a 30-second version of the video, which has Mandarin and English subtitles, it said.
MOFA said it is also translating the video into Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian and Ukrainian.
This year’s UN Climate Change Conference, or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, more commonly referred to as COP29, opened yesterday and is to run through Friday next week in Baku, Azerbaijan.
The conference has been held annually since the first UN climate agreement was reached in 1992. It is intended to be a platform for governments to discuss and agree on policies to limit global temperature rises and adapt to impacts associated with climate change.
Taiwan left the UN in 1971, when the People’s Republic of China was included, and it has since been excluded from the UN’s special agencies.
Since 1995, Taiwanese officials have participated in the annual conference through the government-funded Industrial Technology Research Institute, acting as a non-governmental organization observer.
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