Science or Salience: Setting Policy Agenda for Climate Change in Taiwan.

Scientific knowledge plays a role in shaping and influencing political decision-making on international environmental negotiation and domestic resource management. In the climate regime, the role of climate change research and its epistemic communities are considered as instrumental in fact finding, issue framing, interpreting research results, and developing policy options. More specifically, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 1988) plays exactly such a role in climate negotiations and subsequently in formulating Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) and Kyoto Protocol (1997). Using the 2001 IPCC scientific assessment as the case study, this paper examines how research results from scientific assessment are integrated into policy making, how these results are used to influence policy making and what lessons we learn for the future. Three sets of questions will be addressed: Is climate change a salient issue in Taiwan; is climate change science in Taiwan credible; and most importantly, how does one initiate a Taiwan-IPCC to assure maximum participative process. Given Taiwan’s international status and present domestic structures, this paper outlines an approach for policy recommendations at local and regional levels in decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]