Updated: Brincat presents Bill on climate change

Labour MP Leo Brincat has given notice of a a Private Member's Bill on climate change measures.

The bill calls for a strategic plan of action to tackle climate change and suggests introducing a system of accountability to ensure that the plan is adhered to and climate change is placed high on the national agenda.

Speaking to the media soon after presenting the Bill to the Clerk of the House of Representatives, Mr Brincat – who is Labour’s spokesman for the environment – said Malta needed legislation, agreed upon by stakeholders in the environmental sector, on climate change action.

He said the Bill also proposed that Malta’s targets for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions be laid down in a law approved in Parliament along with a plan on how they would be achieved.

The government would be required to table an annual progress report that would be discussed in the House of Representatives, and it would need to identify and calculate the impact of climate change on the country, especially on tourism, illegal immigration and water resources.

Mr Brincat said that the Climate Change Committee set up by government was not broad-ranging enough and its task was only to prepare strategic reports with an action plan but there was no implementation yard stick.

“It is time to have strategic plans against which people can be held accountable and responsible,” he said, adding that climate change needed to be approached from a purely holistic manner and should be handled in a non-partisan way.

The Resources Ministry in a reaction to Mr Brincat’s Bill said that it agreed that once a strategy was in place, measures would be needed for its implementation.

But everyone, including Mr Brincat himself, had first to contribute towards the strategy.

That Mr Brincat was going straight for controls and implementation was premature.

It would have been far better had Mr Brincat proposed what should be included in the strategy.

The Labour Party should not continue sitting on the fence without proposing concrete measures to counter climate change.

The ministry said that once the committee completed its work, its recommendations would be open for discussion with the public. The government would not exclude any measure for the implementation of the strategy.