Leo Brincat pledges ‘delivery through policy implementation’ on climate change

Environment and Sustainable Development Minister Leo Brincat has announced that the Labour government's approach to climate change is "delivery through policy implementation."

Brincat was speaking during the opening of a Legal Form on Adaptation to Climate Change, at the Valletta University Campus on Monday morning.

During his address, Brincat spoke at length about how the new Labour government is approaching the issue of climate change, touching upon how the government needs to involve stakeholders at a policy-formation stage, mainstream climate change in all other sectors, and also ensure the necessary human resource expertise capacity to implement policy.

"In one sentence, the focus of this government on climate change is the delivery through policy implementation," Brincat said, flanked by Kurt Deketelaere and Simone Borg, co-chairs of the forum.

Brincat began by noting that "without much fanfare, work had already started on formulating the necessary legislature in the past months. We welcome this initiative and believe that for such a process to move ahead, stakeholders should be brought on board at the earliest stage possible."

He said that the Labour Party in Opposition had supported both mitigation and adaptation policies in principle, but "we feel that now the way forward is to take action."

He said that government would be focusing on two primary areas of importance:

"The first is the need to ensure that proper benchmarking is carried out to monitor the success or failure of the implementation of the policies therein, or order to in order to enable prompt and effective remedial action."

"Secondly, we need to ensure that government policy will be implemented by involving all stakeholders. Governments cannot do it alone. These at the same time must include all the ministries, and their separate entities."

By way of example, he referred to how the Ministries of Energy and Transportation impinge on climate change since they are a source of climate change-related emissions.

Brincat augured that ongoing work will continue to take place "within a national governance framework aimed at mainstreaming climate change policy in different areas."

He went on to say that the government's intention is "to see that the adopted strategies on climate change are implemented, and to instil also a governance approach that facilitates mainstreaming of climate change policy across all policy areas."

"We recognise that our size and location makes us highly vulnerable to climate change. It is with this in mind that this government will seek to address and mainstream climate change action into various social, economic, and environmental sectors throughout this legislature."

Brincat also said that the government is also committed to ensuring that our capacity building is enhanced by encouraging more people to specialise in this field.

"Since we can ill afford, not as a government, but also a country, to lose the momentum that our country achieved when climate was put on the international agenda through our initiative at UN level in the 1980s."

"It is pointless to talk about mitigation and adaption by merely paying lip-service without having the necessary skills right across the board to implement the required action," Brincat warned.

"For successful action we need to work as a team rather than in isolation to one another. If we fail to do so we would be undermining our own national efforts, even at the expense of sacrificing our own credibility when we have, as a country, so many effective and capable human resources from which we can draw."

Brincat also noted that it is not by coincidence that the government is committed to merging the Resources Authority with the Environmental Directorate into an Environmental and Resources Authority.

"I do not believe in diktats," Brincat said. "But our national action policy can susses only if we work in unison without allowing any fragmentation to foster and pave the way for avoidable duplication of effort and resources which is a pointless luxury that we can ill afford."

In comments to the media, Brincat also said that the government is planning to also bring the private sector on board with regards to climate change.

"This is no longer an issue that simply concerns the government but also the private sector, which can do its part in this regard. The government is envisaging tackling climate change with this sort of cooperation in mind."

He said that the private sector today is taking on board principles such as social corporate responsibility, adding that climate change is one of those notions.

"I am confident that local companies will be responsive to government's approach," Brincat said, while specifying that any such cooperation would not incur financial burdens on the private sector.

He added that bringing the private sector on board is one of the government's climate change priorities.