Nature Trust – FEE Malta, said that it has taken the initiative to contact the Minister for Sustainable Development, Environment and Climate Change, the Opposition Shadow Minister for the Environment and the Members of the House of Representatives of the Maltese Parliament, to act on climate change.

NTM in a statement, said that this was carried out with the invaluable participation and assistance of the Climate Action Network Europe and the European Environmental Bureau – two leading environmental network organisations.

This initiative was undertaken in view of the upcoming vote on the proposal for Malta to declare a climate emergency, “reminding them to get their priorities right in debating and voting on the proposal,” said NTM.

It said that “as pointed out in the European Commission’s June recommendations, Malta must significantly increase its levels of renewable energy for 2030, as its contribution to the Union’s 2030 target for renewable energy.”

NTM added that, the Commission has also recommended to Malta to significantly increase the ambition towards reducing final and primary energy consumption in 2030 in view of the need to increase the level of efforts to reach the Union’s 2030 energy efficiency target.

The eNGO highlighted the fact that global emissions need to, at minimum, be halved by 2030 to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. The current emissions reduction target is 40% from 1990 levels, which is to be achieved by 2030.

“But scientists and climate experts argue that it may not be enough to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius, as agreed under the Paris Agreement,” it said.

“In the light of the very real threat of severe climate breakdown, European Commission President-elect Ursula von der Leyen has taken the step of presenting a proposal for a higher EU 2030 climate target of -55% greenhouse gas emission reductions, a measure which is also supported by a growing number of progressive EU Member States,” said NTM.

It added that, “at a meeting in Luxembourg this month, according to EU sources, Malta was among 10 governments, including Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, unashamedly blocking the negotiations to adopt the new target, despite informally agreeing that the target would need to be updated before the UN’s climate conference in Chile on December the 2nd.”

Hence, the NGO said is “requesting our Parliament not to squander this opportunity to start restoring the Island’s badly dented environmental credentials.”

NTM concluded by saying that specifically, it is calling on the Government to “stop playing a double game and taking liberties with the life and health of its citizens to please a section of the business lobby, and on the Opposition not to succumb to the temptation of letting the debate on the proposal degenerate into the usual political bickering and reciprocal finger-pointing, a puerile attitude of which unblinkered Maltese citizens have now gotten sick and tired.”

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