Extinction Rebellion Malta calls on parliament to unanimously declare climate change emergency

Extinction Rebellion Malta has called on parliament to declare a climate emergency in an open letter to all members of the house.

The eNGO asked parliament to take the decision unanimously, while calling on Malta to take a leadership role on the issue at a European level.

“Malta’s economic future in terms of fields such as tourism, the property market and ease of operation for small and large businesses; environmental challenges such as droughts and increasingly harsh summers, threats to our health and quality of lie, meaning future generations being born in Malta today will face the consequences of a failure to act,” the letter read.

The letter also asked of MPs to support concrete action on climate change, and offered any cooperation in discussing how to move the parliamentary process towards the recognition and action on climate change.

Extinction Rebellion Malta’s calls for parliament to declare a climate change emergency follow that of the youth council, who in September also said that such a commitment would serve as the first step in dealing with the climate change problem.

“This will not only serve as a commitment from both sides of Parliament but also as the first step for a unified Maltese front, from all stakeholders, to achieve this impossible task [of successfully addressing climate change],” the council had said.

On Thursday, Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi, proposed the setting up of a parliamentary committee responsible for overseeing action on climate change and which would have the power to nominate a superintendent for the climate change emergency.

Government MPs, however, shot down several aspects of the motion, and insisted that a 2015 law - the Climate Action Act - had already created the framework necessary to address the climate change challenge. Moreover, government MPs said, Malta already had a climate action board and a climate change ambassador, Professor Simone Borg.

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