Climate change alert

"I hope the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change presented last Monday in London will provide a spur to action to everyone in Malta concerned with climate change," Michael Zammit Cutajar, Malta's Ambassador for Environmental Affairs said on Friday.

Speaking to The Sunday Times, Mr Zammit Cutajar said that "the report's dire warnings of impending catastrophe make an overwhelming case for spending now to limit climate change rather than spending much more to cope with its possibly devastating impacts if present global warming trends continue unchecked. Even so, the change 'built in' due to rising global temperatures caused by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases until now would still require extensive adaptation measures in most countries."

The Stern Review, whose high-profile launch was attended by Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown "will certainly have a positive impact and focus minds in Nairobi and after," Mr Zammit Cutajar continued, "as well as opening new lines of discussion within the EU. It is an extremely important breakthrough document, which interrelates both the science and the economics of climate change".

"I welcome the Maltese government's establishment of an inter-ministerial committee on climate change, and trust it will soon start its work," he continued. "A holistic, inter-sectoral approach is absolutely crucial for Malta to tackle the broad range of issues involved (energy, transport, agriculture, water supplies, coastal management, etc.)".

In April 2004, the Cabinet adopted an outline climate change response strategy contained in Malta's First National Communication to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A 2005 report by Dr Simone Borg entitled "A National Climate Change Programme for Malta" proposed a set of policy measures to prepare the country for possibly grave long-term impacts of climate change, as well to limit its greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Zammit Cutajar will be representing Malta "heading a delegation of one" at UNFCCC's 12th Conference of Parties starting in Nairobi, Kenya, tomorrow. The first executive secretary of UNFCCC from 1992 to 2001, he will also continue work as chair of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol tasked with winning agreement on a new round of emission cuts after 2012 under the UNFCCC's Kyoto Protocol.

"I can't say whether I will stand for another term," he explained. "Indeed it has not been decided whether the Western European group will continue chairing the group for the next two years or whether the 'Group of 77' developing countries will take over.

"While I sympathise with the Stern Review's call for an international agreement next year on future pathways for major emission cuts and global climate change response, I think a more probable date will be 2009/2010 - by which time the new American administration starting in January 2009 would have settled in."