The APGN Congress can be considered one of the most important forums on climate change in all of the Asia-Pacific region. This was also the first time that Taiwan hosted a large-scale international green conference. A total of 113 environmental activists from five continents attended, many of them coming to Taiwan for the first time. About 150 persons from domestic social groups also participated, and another 80 served as volunteers to staff the event.

The theme of this year's conference was "Fair Share," stressing the just distribution of resources regardless of generation, class, or region. It was also aimed at finding a next step appropriate for the Asia-Pacific region in the wake of the international situation that has followed the Copenhagen Accord.

The Congress of the Asia-Pacific Greens Network uses a "consensus" decision-making method. Representatives of member groups use proposal forms to draft proposals for discussion right on the floor, then go through a discussion process that is sincere, friendly, and open, so that the decision-making process stimulates all the parties' collective wisdom and creativity.

For the opening ceremony, a group of Bunun Aboriginal people from Yushan were invited to perform the tribe's renowned pasibutbut harmony singing. The opening was jointly chaired by Green Party Taiwan convener Pan Han-sheng and Australian Greens founder Bob Brown, who is also a member of parliament.

Brown was the first-ever member of his party's state assembly delegation in Tasmania, was later elected to the Australian Senate, and is also the Asia-Pacific region's first openly gay member of a national parliament. Over more than 30 years, he has led his party from the political margins to become the third largest at both national and local levels, and has successfully forced renewable energy, water resources management, and anti-war issues onto the political agenda.

In his opening remarks, he encouraged all of the Green parties in the Asia-Pacific region to try to win at least one seat in parliament, in order to bring to bear the power of a critical minority. He also declared, with a big smile: "We are not pessimists, we are optimists!"

Then began the "open space" conference, which fully demonstrated the green culture of inclusiveness and mutual support. After facilitators announced the opening of the floor to any proposed topics, people flocked to the center of the hall to pick up proposal forms, and in less than five minutes had come up with 18 issue areas, including an alliance of Asia-Pacific gay greens, the environmental crisis on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, promotion of a green economy, and even abolition of the death penalty.

C.P. Yen Foundation executive director Jorie Wu, who served as one of the facilitators, says that this was the most diverse and exhilarating conference they had ever attended. Former Awakening Foundation chairperson R.S. Sun said with obvious excitement, "This kind of meeting of grass-roots activists vividly demonstrates the voice of communities and the practical political problems faced by green politics... it was a lot more interesting than an academic conference, that's for sure!"

The morning of the second day there were lectures by Apisai Ielemia, the premier of Tuvalu, and Dr. Vandana Shiva, a renowned environmental activist from India.

As a result of global warming and rising sea levels, already a quarter of the people of the South Pacific microstate of Tuvalu, with a population of only 12,000, have been forced to relocate to New Zealand as environmental refugees. Because ocean water has salinated all the land and fresh water sources, there have been shortages of food and drinkable water, setting off warning bells about the health of the remaining population.

Premier Ielemia opened a lot of eyes when he declared the Copenhagen conference to be an infuriating "failure." He blamed the powerful states, including the US, for using funding assistance as a weapon to force other countries to sign an agreement without any substantial carbon reduction targets. He declared that international society must take immediate action to ensure that the global rise in temperature is kept within 1.5°C.

Vandana Shiva, founder in the 1980s of the non-governmental organization Navdanya (meaning the nine traditional staple foods of India) has been the recipient of numerous accolades-including winning the Right Livelihood Award (aka the Alternative Nobel Prize) and being called an environmental "heroine" by Time magazine. She has provided leadership to Indian farmers who have been severely harmed by free trade, and has also led opposition to genetically modified seeds being produced by corporate conglomerates. Today Indian farmers led by Shiva are helping like-minded neighbors in Tibet and Bangladesh.

In her address, Shiva talked about the problems in the river basin of the Ganges, India's largest river valley. Because the Gangotri Glacier, at the head of the basin, is receding (i.e. melting) at a rate of 23 meters per year, there have already been extreme weather conditions and environmental refugees. She emphasized that there is no need to talk about the UN panel on climate change to alert residents of the valley to the crisis: they have been absorbing its effects and adapting to it for a long time now. For this reason, she suggested that climate change should be addressed by learning from the community life and the accumulated knowledge of indigenous peoples on the front lines, rather than by policies set by concentrations of the political and economic powers that be.

She also called on all citizens' groups and local governments concerned about the global ecology to "pour love anew into the soil." It is time, she argued, to leave behind the economy based on dead carbon (petrochemical fuels) and shift over to an economy based on living carbon (using organic soil as the foundation) as the only pathway for sustainable development for the human race.

Greens around the world have a culture of mutual respect and non-violence, and ethnic and regional differences have never been an impediment.

After three days of proposals and robust discussion, the conference ended on May 2. Seventeen motions were adopted, of which the highest degree of consensus was achieved on one to oppose the expansion of nuclear energy in the Asia-Pacific region. That motion noted that the majority of Asia-Pacific countries are in earthquake zones, and thus are not suitable for nuclear power plants. Moreover, at present no country is able to solve the problem of nuclear waste, and expansion of the use of nuclear power will also increase the risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Other important proposals approved by the conference included ones to abolish the death penalty, seek more social responsibility from the high-tech industry, keep the rise in global temperature within 1.5°C, and support Taiwan's becoming a party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Green Party Taiwan convener Pan Han-sheng has said that there were three main gains from the conference. The first was to significantly increase the possibility of Taiwan's participation in international climate-change organizations. The second was to introduce more progressive green ideas and personalities to Taiwan, thus giving an enormous morale boost to those working on behalf of the environment. "Just as mountain climbers encourage each other on the path upward, this breath of fresh air will hold out for a long time!" The third was to get many young volunteers enrolled in the ranks of the environmental movement. For the future, we can look forward to Taiwan taking on greater responsibilities and having more impact in terms of transnational green links and the task of recruiting and training more activists at local levels.