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‘A CONVENTION THAT REVOLUTIONISED INTERNATIONAL LAW’ - SPEECH BY THE HON. FRANCIS ZAMMIT DIMECH, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, AT THE FIRST NATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON CLIMATE CHANGE
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06/12/2001
06/12/2001
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
| It is indeed an honour for me to inaugurate this | First National Climate Change Symposium. Last July, as Minister for the Environment, I headed the Malta delegation at the resumed sixth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change in Bonn. This session will be remembered in the history of the international community as the session which resuscitated the climate change process because despite many political set backs, the parties to the Climate Change Convention took the necessary commitments to breathe life back into the Kyoto Protocol. |
| I can still recall my sense of pride during these | difficult negotiations, which more often than not, ran into the small hours of the morning, as I kept reminding myself that it had been Malta which had triggered into action this whole process, when back in 1988, it had taken the remarkable initiative to bring to the attention of the international political community, the urgent need to conserve climate in the interests of present and future generations of humankind. |
| Under the guidance of the Prime Minister Dr Eddie | Fenech Adami and the Minister of Foreign Affairs at that time, the Honorable Dr Censu Tabone, Malta’s remarkable initiative became a concrete proposal in the form of a draft UN Resolution. The legal and organisational strategy of the Maltese initiative was embodied in this draft resolution. |
| Malta in fact way back in 1988 had the foresight to | warn the international political community that the phenomenon of climate change is so intimately linked with the existence of man on Earth, that there is an urgent need to take effective action to deal with the problem on a global basis in the interest of mankind as a whole. To do this, Malta felt that it was for governments and other policy-makers to adopt co-ordinated effective policies and measures at the national and regional levels giving special attention to the needs of developing countries. |
| The international community was once more overtaken | by surprise that a small State like Malta had the tenacity to voice its concern over a global issue which bigger and more powerful States, were reluctant to address because of vested interests. The Prime Minister Dr Fenech Adami in fact, had explained in his address to the United Nations General Assembly a year later, that Malta’s small size and vulnerability endowed it with a sense of duty to speak out on issues which are of global concern because small States are in a better position to gauge the needs of the so called "international commons". Malta as a small island state in fact is in a better position to argue that the protection of climate from change requires an international strategy which transcends over State Sovereignty in the interest of present and future generations. |
| Despite initial skepticism, Malta’s initiative was | unanimously endorsed by the General Assembly and despite the political controversies which characterised the whole process, the international community has risen up to the occasion and asserted the need to address the threat of climate change as a matter which cannot solely pertain to the realm of domestic jurisdiction but which requires concerted action, at the highest political and legal level. |
| The Convention itself has revolutionised | international law. The traditional principles of the sacrosanct principle of State sovereignty and domestic jurisdiction have been reinterpreted to include the concomitant duty to use national territory in such a way that international legal responsibility arises, if harm is caused to the climate of other states and of areas beyond national jurisdiction. |
| The obligations under the Convention are not only | preventive in nature but essentially precautionary as they were agreed upon in the face of scientific uncertainty. |
| The Convention also adopted a comprehensive approach | which was an innovative way of codifying international law at the time, as most Conventions even those relating to environmental issues adopted a sectoral approach. |
| The Convention also introduced a completely new | concept in international law – joint implementation which allows State parties to strike a partnership to implement obligations under the Convention. This encourages States to take a shared interest in resolving and managing the obligations precisely because rather than inter-States issues these obligations are of a transnational character where co-operation and collaboration must replace confrontation. |
| The negotiations that led to the Kyoto Protocol were | also an uphill struggle as Parties to the Convention, including the majority of the industrialised nations led by the European Union, have worked hard to salvage the environmental integrity of the Protocol. The Protocol in fact is ground-breaking in its own right as it introduces for example the Cleaner Development Mechanism – a wonderful opportunity to assist developing countries onto a truly sustainable development path based on energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. The Protocol also promotes public participation and transparency, emissions trading mechanisms and credible compliance systems which deters non-compliance through emissions trading by means of shared liability. Last but not least, the provision of an Adaptation Fund which together with the obligations on capacity-building and technology transfer, would seriously implement the notion of common but differentiated responsibility of States, towards the climate change issue as it is entrenched in one of the Principles in the Climate Change Convention. |
| The Kyoto Protocol and the Climate Change Convention | have been criticised all along, for having too many loopholes in order to overcome entrenched political opposition, to secure adherence. I beg to differ. These two multilateral legal instruments have been, as I have stated beforehand, ground-breaking in the history of international law. Despite everything, the Parties to the Convention save a few isolated, albeit crucial States, have come up with a comprehensive long-term global strategy flexible enough to adopt more stringent and scientifically adequate measures and which has as its overriding consideration, the interests of mankind as a whole. This, ladies and gentlemen had been Malta’s vision in 1988. It is with this sense of challenge and eventual success that Malta must now meet its commitments under the Convention and the Protocol and I have no doubt that this symposium will be a fundamental step ahead in this process. |
Thank you.
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