The MEUSAC-MSDEC conference planned for April 18 on ‘The implementation of COP21: A business threat or opportunity?’ could not be more timely. It will take place in the same week in which global leaders are expected to sign the Paris Accord of December last on climate action.

As Christina Figueres, the UNFCCC Executive Secretary, recently remarked – Paris has been a resounding success but that was the easiest part.

Now we have to move to three important stages: the actual signing to show commitment; the ratification; and the implementation process.

We have chosen this particularly theme to underline the fact that climate action and business opportunities complement each other, in the same way that sustainable economic progress and the environment can do.

The EU’s own environmental legislation built up over several decades addresses such issuesof sustainability. Since thenit has also acted externally through the region’s role as a leader and a facilitator at an international level.

It is our duty when it comes to both climate and the environment to ensure that the same dictum is applied locally too beyond our regional, European and multilateral obligations.

This will no doubt be one of the daunting challenges ahead for the Environment and Resources Authority (ERA) that has formally assumed its separate identity from Mepa, as has the Planning Authority. I wish both authorities every success.

Personally I am comforted by the fact that the composition of the ERA board members has been well received by civil society at large.

We now need to implement the global agenda at a European and yes, even at a local level

Media comments have been positive throughout, the reason being that all the members chosen are publicly known for their qualifications, background, commitment to the environment as well as for their personal integrity.

It was equally positive that not only did the Opposition and the eNGOs nominate their representative, but I have reason to believe that they are both contributing actively in the fulfilment of their respective roles.

This augurs well for the present and the future when the mechanisms, some of them new, provided for by the new legislation come into effect.

With this in mind nominations have been made for ERA representation on both the Planning Authority’s board as well as on the executive council of the PDA.

The challenge that we all face as a government as well as through the institutions that are being set up is to ensure that through our actions there willbe a true reflection of the spirit and the substance of all that our electoral programme pledged when the Labour government won the resounding majority that it secured in the first quarter of 2013.

Cutting bureaucracy is an important government priority but through our actions we must also ensure that this will not impede in any way our efforts as a nation to address major issues like eco system threats, climate change, and the depletion of the limited resources that we have.

I am very confident that as a government we will strengthen rather than undermine further progress on the path towards sustainability while avoiding the temptation that certain European jurisdictions have fallen victim to, when through their actions they even tend to reverse what has been achieved through action at a European level.

One debate going on at EU level is not to allow that the EU’s efforts to tackle certain environmental challenges, together with economic and social ones, are held to ransom by certain countries.

This obviously applies to small countries like Malta too.

Ignoring the EU’s environmental success story would ultimately end up eroding support for the EU itself. I state all this with more than a glimmer of hope in the path fields ahead.

The need for a new global agenda of transformational change for sustainable development should be adopted and pursued locally too.

We are pleased to note that for the first time our ministry has its own directorate for sustainable development, although for this to work effectively it needs to be mainstreamed right across government, the private sector and civil society in a joined up manner.

By signing up to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its 17 universally applicable sustainable development goals, the EU and all member states, Malta included, has implicitly committed itself to putting sustainability at the heart of its policies.

We now need to implement the global agenda at a European and yes, even at a local level. We are committed to strengthen our structures in the very near term.

Our biggest challenge in the years to come is to transform our priorities into a more forward looking, fit for purpose agenda and thus show how as an EU member State we can continue to tackle environmental, social and economic issues even more proactively in a complimentary manner with one another, while facing up to our responsibilities.

Success can only be gauged through delivery rather than mere platitudes.

Which brings to mind the famous words uttered by EUclimate chief, Miguel Arias Canete, for whom I have the deepest respect for his downto earth, practical and pragmatic approach. At the end of COP21 he had said:

Today we celebrate, tomorrow we have to act.

This applies to us all in all the areas and sectors that fall under our collective responsibility.

Leo Brincat is Minister for Sustainable Development, Environment and Climate Change.