Taiwan's Envoy to Japan Pushes for Deeper Disaster Cooperation and COP31 Access
Taiwan's top representative in Japan is calling for closer disaster-response ties with Tokyo and is asking Japan to back Taiwan's bid to join the UN climate talks — a story about diplomacy and climate policy rather than markets.
- Taiwan's envoy Li Yi-yang published an op-ed in Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun warning that worsening extreme weather and climate change are hitting both countries, citing deadly flooding in Japan and major farm losses from typhoons in Taiwan this year.
- He wants Taiwan and Japan to deepen cooperation on disaster prevention, mitigation, and rebuilding, pointing to recent technical exchanges on landslide prevention and island disaster response, and flagged Japan's new disaster agency launching November 2 as a chance to go further.
- Taiwan already works with Japan, the US, Australia, and the UK on energy transition and circular economy policy, and says it has shared its own tech with Paraguay and Pacific island nations to fight carbon emissions and land loss.
- Taiwan has set its own emissions targets and started charging companies a carbon fee this year, aiming to cut about 45 million tons of carbon by 2030, even though it isn't a member of the UN climate treaty.
- Li said Taiwan was again left out of this year's COP31 climate conference in Turkey for political reasons, blocking it from sharing its climate data and policy results with the world, and urged Japan to support Taiwan's "meaningful participation" going forward.
Outlook: Taiwan is likely to keep pushing for COP access and expand bilateral disaster and climate cooperation with Japan, but its exclusion from the UN climate body will likely continue absent a shift in the political dynamics around its international status.