Environmental academics and activists have warned that even if Malta makes progress on climate change, its success could still risk being stymied by other polluting countries, even outside the Mediterranean region.
According to Charles Yousif, Charles Galdies and Stefano Moncada, from the University of Malta’s Climate Change Platform, and Martin Galea De Giovanni, director of Friends of the Earth Malta, though the island could make real strides towards meeting climate change targets its impact could be overshadowed by emissions generated by fellow EU states and further afield.
The Climate Change Platform academics said the transition towards the measures contained in the Clean Energy For All Europeans package would help the country to better educate and involve the local population in owning its clean energy improvements.
According to the European Commission, the package would lead EU members like Malta away from fossil fuels and towards greener energy. The changes include a 36 per cent cut in CO2 emissions generated by the energy consumption of buildings and reaching the binding target of 32 per cent of renewable energy sources by 2030.
We are not too small to set an example to the rest of the world
The academics said Malta would need to start transitioning this year and “eventually aligning our entire national energy sector towards these targets in subsequent years”.
However, they added, a full transition would be hampered by fellow EU countries, like Poland and Hungary, still heavily reliant on fossil fuels. In turn, more funding would be needed to make the transition.
Mr Galea De Giovanni argued that even if Malta made a significant effort towards going completely green and renewable “it would still have negligible impact on the global production of emissions”.
“While we are too small to make a tangible impact, we are not too small to set an example to the rest of the world. Malta could make a difference if it showed the world that a small country can still meet its international obligations on climate change,” he noted.
Malta’s 61.7 per cent gap in relation to the 2030 greenhouse gas emission target is double that of the second worst country, Luxembourg, which will fell short by 25.3 per cent. Only Portugal, Greece and Sweden are expected to exceed the targets.
Mr Galea De Giovanni fears that the environment would become more politicised and monetised.
“We will see politicians and businesses greenwashing their way to gain more popularity and make more profits,” he said.
“We will see them in front of cameras, planting little saplings and cleaning up some beach from plastic debris while they skirt away from their responsibilities to tackle the root causes that are eroding our environment at rates unprecedented in human history,” he added.
The Climate Change Platform academics are concerned as to whether there is enough political will to draw up and implement climate change plans that address problems like power generation and reducing the number of cars on the roads.
They noted that technology and good examples from other countries existed and these could be used to carry out action plans.
“Such action plans would require national consensus rather than government action so that continuity is guaranteed for at least the next decades,” they declared.