MOFA video calls for Taiwan's participation in UNFCCC

Taipei, Nov. 11 (CNA) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) on Monday released a bilingual video calling for global support of Taiwan's participation in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to coincide with the start of COP29 in Azerbaijan.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said in a press release that in line with previous practices, this year MOFA has also made a video clip titled "Our Pale Blue Dot," a reference to astronomer Carl Sagan's 1994 book on the future of humans in space.

The 2-minute-30-second clip includes images and videos taken by Formosat-5, Taiwan's first domestically developed and produced Earth observation satellite, and showcases Taiwan's achievements in helping its allies combat climate change, MOFA said.

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 currently has Mandarin and English subtitles, MOFA said.

MOFA said it is also translating the clip into Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Portugal, Arabic, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian and Ukrainian.

The 2024 U.N. Climate Change Conference, or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, more commonly referred to as COP29, will take place from Nov. 11-22 in Baku, Azerbaijan.

The conference has been held annually since the first U.N. 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, officially called the Republic of China, left the U.N. in 1971, when the People's Republic of China took its place, and it has since been excluded from the U.N.'s special agencies, including the UNFCCC.

Since 1995, Taiwan officials have participated in the annual conference through the government-funded Industrial Technology Research Institute, acting as an NGO observer.