Malta will be offering technical support as capacity building to states most vulnerable to climate change as part of its climate finance commitment, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said today.
Speaking at the United Nations Climate Change Summit in New York, Dr Muscat said Malta was always been on the forefront in advocating climate action.
Its determination to switch to a low carbon economy was characterised by a vision, based on the long-term, socio-economic, and environmental benefits of greenhouse gas emissions reduction.
The county had to overcome significant challenges to meet its greenhouse gas objectives within the EU, but it remained committed to forge ahead and identify any possible opportunities that aimed for further reductions.
Since 1990, Malta’s GDP grew by 260 per cent, yet its green house gases emissions per unit of GDP decreased by 55 per cent.
Dr Muscat said that Malta’s opportunities emerging within the energy sector were being fully capitalized and as the energy generation sector was by far Malta’s highest contributor to national GHG emissions, these measures were expected to domestically lead to around a 40 per cent GHG reduction compared to 1990 levels in Malta’s energy sector carbon footprint by 2020 and beyond.
Malta was also undertaking commitments in its mitigation and adaptation policies through the drafting of a Climate Action Act to ensure that legal measures for all sectors would be under pinned to set up the required institutional capacity to monitor, review and verify our reduction targets and adaptation measures, secure better climate governance and ensure the necessary forward planning.
He said that as an EU state, Malta remained committed to the efforts that the EU undertook in its contributions to climate action to financially and technically support developing countries through the EU budget and the mobilisation of the Green Climate Fund.
“Malta is proud to announce that as part of its climate finance commitment, it will be offering technical support as capacity building to states most vulnerable to climate change.
“It will do so by:
- Offering nationals from these States, scholarships in undergraduate/postgraduate studies related to climate action at the University of Malta; and
- Providing assistance and training at a policy making, vocational and institutional level.”
Dr Muscat said Malta aimed to outreach developing states even by providing the necessary linkages. Its aim was to become an energy hub in the Mediterranean region; by exploiting the possibilities of renewable energy across borders and the island’s potential as a gas supply hub with a link to gas fields in North Africa to Europe.
He referred to the 2015 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting being hosted by Malta next month and said this would serve as another opportunity for Commonwealth colleagues to continue to discuss these global issues ahead of the next major international appointment to discuss important climate matters.