In this paper, an algorithm to compute a certified G 1 rational parametric approximation for algebraic space curves is given by extending the local generic position method for solving zero dimensional polynomial equation systems to the case of dimension one. By certified, we mean the approximation curve and the original curve have the same topology and their Hausdauff distance is smaller than a given precision. Thus, the method also gives a new algorithm to compute the topology for space algebraic curves. The main advantage of the algorithm, inhering from the local generic method, is that topology computation and approximation for a space curve is directly reduced to the same tasks for two plane curves. In particular, the error bound of the approximation space curve is obtained from the error bounds of the approximation plane curves explicitly. Nontrivial examples are used to show the effectivity of the method.