The European Union has an opportunity to lead the way in the battle to limit climate change, Joseph Muscat told an international summit in Paris today.
The One Planet Summit is French president Emmanuel Macron's attempt to reboot international cooperation to limit climate change, following US president Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the USA from the Paris Accord.
Mr Macron used the summit to warn leaders that the world was not moving fast enough to counteract climate change.
"We are losing the battle," he said, urging the assembled heads of states, ministers and executives to launch a new phase in the fight against global warming.
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The summit steered clear of seeking binding commitments, and instead focused on how public and private financial institutions can mobilise more money and how investors can pressure corporate giants to shift towards more ecologically friendly strategies.
More than 200 institutional investors with $26 trillion in assets under management said on Tuesday they would step up pressure on the world's biggest corporate greenhouse gas emitters to combat climate change.
That, they said, would be more effective than threatening to pull the plug on their investments in companies, which include Coal India, Gazprom, Exxon Mobil and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp.
Separately, European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said the executive was "looking positively" at plans to reduce capital requirements for environmentally-friendly investments by banks in a bid to boost the green economy.
The move could be part of a broader set of measures the EU plans to present in March to meet the target of cutting carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2030, for which it estimates around €180 billion in additional low-carbon investments are needed per year.
'Strong sign of unity'
Dr Muscat said that while the US move to exit the Paris Accord was regrettable, the EU should now fill the political void left by its absence from the sector.
"European leaders have sent out a strong sign of unity," he said, noting that while the US federal government had ditched the Paris Accord, individual US states could still sign up to the deal.
The Maltese Prime Minister told delegates that Malta was aiming to collect around 70 per cent of all plastic bottles generated in the country by 2019 through a bottle deposit scheme that would soon be introduced.
Environment Minister Jose Herrera accompanied Dr Muscat during the summit.
Malta's commitments
He said Malta had committed €100,000 towards the establishment of the Commonwealth Malta State Centre of Excellence for Small Island States. The centre will support small states with practical support in attaining Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's), to which they are committed under Agenda 2030.
Dr Herrera said Malta was preparing to be in a position to drastically reduce the dependency on landfilling through the introduction of a waste-to-energy facility, earmarked for completion by 2023; the closure of the Magħtab Landfill; increasing efforts and initiatives to reach recycling targets; the introduction of a nation-wide collection of the organic bag, and a shift towards a more circular economy.
Malta would also continue to offer full scholarships for a Master of Science in climate mitigation, adaptation and governance with contribution of €100,000 as part of its Climate Finance commitment, another €30,000 would be dedicated for awareness-building events, and a further €3,000 would be disbursed annually in connection with school competitions.