2024-10-17
On 12 September, TCAN launched our Just Transition Outlook in Taiwan: Innovating Governance and Fostering a Support System policy report. As the first policy report focusing on just transition in Taiwan, we examined the current state of just transition policy and governance planning and proposed a total of 11 policy recommendations in the areas of “governance innovation”, “industrial transformation”, and “support system”. Our researcher, Yang Pei-wei, introduced the 11 recommendations and the local contexts and international best practices from which we drew them. Overall, while the Taiwanese government has made significant progress in building the governance and legislative frameworks over the past few years, much remains to be done in strengthening stakeholder engagement, identifying transition impact hotspots, and incorporating administrative resources in social protection, public health, green finance, carbon pricing, etc. to better align capital and resources with a healthy, decarbonised, and empowering future. For instance, a recent study from […]
2024-10-17
On 27 August, TCAN and the Green Citizens’ Action Alliance (GCAA) co-hosted the 2024 Anti-greenwashing Forum. Focusing on the two major themes of “ESG-washing” and “Net-zero washing”, the forum gathered stakeholders from Taiwan’s regulatory regime, sustainability awarding bodies, and corporate sustainability consulting agencies to explore the roles each can respectively play in co-constructing an anti-greenwashing ecosystem. As the need to transition to a net-zero economy becomes ever more pressing, companies have increasingly adopted the languages of ESG, SDGs, and CSR. To help consumers see through potentially deceptive green marketing tactics and to prevent the “bad money” of companies with poor records of environmental violations from driving out the good, GCAA has built a range of digital tools such as the Thaubing Footprint website, the Scan-it-Before-Buying-it app, and the ESG Detector over the past eight years. Earlier this year, TCAN and GCAA also published the 2024 Corporate Sustainability Reporting Tracker report, […]
2024-09-20
On the afternoon of Friday, September 20, people from around the world marched across the Brooklyn Bridge, chanting, “We demand climate justice now!” to kick off New York Climate Week. The Taiwan Climate Action Network, composed of five climate advocacy groups, including the Green Citizens’ Action Alliance, the Homemakers United Foundation, the Environmental Rights Foundation, the Taiwan Environment & Planning Association, and the Global Citizen of the Earth, Taiwan all participated for the first time in this New York Climate Week, ensuring that the world recognizes that Taiwan, a vital part of the global environmental movement, that should not be overlooked. Figure 1 Figure 2: People from around the world participated in ‘Fridays for Future,’ crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. The New York Climate Week is organized by the non-profit organization Climate Group, bringing together environmental groups from around the world to discuss climate-related issues over nearly two weeks throughout New […]
2024-09-05
A couple of weeks ago, on the first anniversary of the Taiwan Carbon Solution Exchange (TCX)’s establishment, we co-hosted a forum with the Green Citizens’ Action Alliance on the quality of carbon credits. While the carbon market continues to grow as a prevalent means for Taiwanese companies to reduce their Greenhouse gas emissions and advance climate action, misinformation and confusion surrounding carbon market mechanisms have led to an emergence of fraudulent practices: from fake courses to uncertified carbon credits to the exaggeration of emissions reduction results using low-quality credits. Such tendencies pose financial and reputational risks to companies and undermine the transparency of – and thereby the social trust in – carbon markets. With experts and practitioners from various fields – including representatives from TCX and the Chung-hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER) – we discussed the different risk factors throughout the lifecycle of a carbon credit, what companies can […]
2024-06-17
Taipei, May 2 (CNA) Taiwan’s sustainability awards should have stricter criteria to avoid suspicions of “greenwashing,” environmental groups said on Thursday, as they warned some industries, including semiconductors, could be a drag on Taiwan’s effort to hit its carbon emissions reduction target. Sustainability awards should have discernable criteria to boost their credibility and avoid suspicion of greenwashing, Green Citizens’ Action Alliance Deputy Secretary-General Tseng Hung-wen (曾虹文) said during a press conference promoting a report, titled “2024 Corporate Sustainability Reporting Tracker,” published by the groups in Taipei. For example, she said, 12 of the 64 recipients of the Taiwan Corporate Sustainability Award (TCSA) in 2023 had been previously fined for pollution offences, including state-owned CPC Corporation, which was also found guilty of not disclosing all the facts. Tseng said being law-abiding should be a basic requirement to be considered for such awards, rather than simply one of the evaluation criteria. The […]
