An international conference addressing Climate Change Diplomacy is being organised by DiploFoundation in partnership with the Foreign Affairs Ministry on February 7-8. It will be opened by Foreign Minister Michael Frendo.
During the conference, participants will discuss both traditional and innovative approaches used in climate change diplomacy. The conference will focus largely on capacity-building. It will address the training and other needs of small states, and other actors who, due to limited financial or human resources, currently do not participate fully in climate change diplomacy.
The keynote speech will be delivered by Dr Michael Zammit Cutajar, Ambassador for Climate Change, vice-chair of UNFCCC Group. Other main local speakers include Mr Martin Scicluna, a member of the National Commission for Sustainable Development, who will talk about Malta’s Sustainable Development Plan, Dr Charles Sammut, from the University of Malta, who will discuss Malta’s Communication to the UNFCC, and Mr Martin Galea, President of the Federation of Industry, who will be sharing the business sector’s perspective on climate change.
A number of international speakers will be attending the conference, some of whom were contributors at the Bali Summit. Ms Aubrey Meyer, from the Global Commons Institute, will discuss the science-based, global climate policy framework of Contraction and Convergence (C&C), which provides an equitable solution to cutting carbon emissions so that global collective efforts to reduce emissions are proportionate to the problem. Mr Alejandro Litovsky, a senior advisor with AccountAbility, an international institute dedicated to the promotion of social, ethical and overall organisational accountability for sustainable development, will be talking about the accountability challenge for climate diplomacy.
Mr Shane Tomlinson, from Third Generation Environ-mentalism, will be sharing his company’s capacity-building experience in developing countries in ensuring effective negotiation and implementation of a global climate deal.
As a multi-disciplinary field demanding input from a wide variety of disciplines, including science, technology, policy processes, legislation, ethics, and philosophy, the conference offers challenges of inter-professional communication and requires true understanding across very different professional cultures.
DiploFoundation will be drawing upon the experience of its panel of diplomats, such as Dr Alex Sceberras Trigona, Ambassador Aldo Matteucci, former deputy secretary general of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), and Ambassador Kishan Rana, all of whom are faculty members.
Mr Jovan Kurbalija, executive director of DiploFoundation, will be presenting its ideas for developing an online toolkit for climate change diplomacy.
For more information and to register, visit www.diplomacy.
edu/Conferences/ClimateChange/default.asp, e-mail [email protected], or phone Tel. 2133-3323.