For outsiders, Libya may be just a geopolitical crisis and eventually an opportunity for lucrative contracts.

But for nearly seven million Libyans, Libya is their shattered home where two thirds live under the poverty line, a third are displaced, thousands of homes together with schools and hospitals were destroyed and there is the lack of consistent supply of electricity and water … although Libya is one of the wealthiest countries in the Mediterranean.

11 years later we are still trying to put the pieces of Libya together after foreign military intervention which destroyed a system without thinking of the day after, like demolishing a house without planning the next stage of rebuilding it.

In April 2016, Barack Obama himself admitted that the biggest mistake of his presidency was the lack of planning for the aftermath of Muammar Gaddafi’s ouster in Libya that left the country spiralling into chaos and coming under threat from violent extremists. In a Fox News interview, Obama said his “worst mistake” was “probably failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya”.

As the international community, we must not repeat this “worst mistake” in Libya. The least we can do is assist the Libyans in rebuilding their home, but without meddling and imposing solutions that create more problems. Libya cannot be rebuilt from on top and from the outside: it is as if trying to build a house from the roof down, it will collapse.

Libya needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, by the Libyans and for the Libyans. But to do that, Libyans must find ways of living and working together. The divisions of Libyans help those Libyans and outsiders who want Libya to remain ungovernable, so that they can exploit it in their own interests.

As an old Libyan friend tells me: our vast resources are also our curse: there are so many who want to get their hands on them that it is in their interest that we are divided, fighting against each other instead of working together to regain control of our country and run it for the good of all Libyans. For this to happen there needs to be reconciliation among Libyans, and yesterday’s and today’s enemies must become tomorrow’s partners.

An indispensable step will be holding presidential and parliamentary elections. On their own they will solve very little. But without them the situation will get much worse as there will be no legitimate authority in Libya and it will become even more ungovernable making it impossible to unite military, financial and national political institutions without which there will be no stability.

We need to focus on the withdrawal of the mercenaries as a first step. This has to be managed well and it is up to the UN to be given the necessary support to see that this withdrawal is managed well at every stage if we do not want to export armed mercenaries into other countries.

The withdrawal of all foreign military presence needs to be gradual, incremental and verifiable and will realistically take longer to carry out. It is not in the interest of anyone (except those who want harm) to have a big bang approach to withdrawal, as this will create huge problems and disrupt the existing fragile equilibrium through the balance of forces. If this equilibrium is broken, Libya can collapse totally internally and destabilise all the neighbours.

We need to support the Libyan people in the difficult road ahead to regain control of Libya, to use Libya’s wealth for the benefit of all Libyans. May the spirit of teacher, leader and martyr Omar Mukhtar (1858-1931) prevail: he sacrificed his life for a free and united Libya. Within Libya and outside there are those whose interest is that Libyan brothers continue to kill and fight each other so that they can take for themselves the wealth that belongs to all the Libyan people. We must overcome those whose interest is for Libya to remain ungovernable.

Affordable clean energy

We must mobilise public support for the measures that we need to take to face the climate emergency. If we do not take the people with us, they will dismiss decarbonisation as another project of the elite and populists will find it easy to turn people against the transition and adjustments we have to make to clean energy.

All the countries in the world have to lose their comfort zone and people must be helped to adjust to this painful reality. We must also not allow ourselves to abandon fossil fuels quicker than developing green and cleaner alternative energies. As this will be very disruptive and push prices up.

In Malta, we have stopped using coal for at least 30 years as it was first replaced by heavy fuel oil, which was still very polluting and a few years ago we switched to gas. The worst polluter now is our transport and that is why the government has decided to support generously the change from dirty to clean private and public transport. Other oil and gas consuming countries need support for a just transition from these fossil fuels to clean renewable energy.

So do oil and gas producing countries – concentrated mostly in the Middle East and North Africa. They are being expected not just to change their transport, but their whole livelihood that has been built on fossil fuels. They also need support for a just transition if they are not to collapse with all the geopolitical consequences that will bring.

The transition is costly. So decarbonisation must be made affordable to be achievable and to mobilise the support of our citizens – we need to formulate a post-Covid climate friendly economic strategy that combines economic growth, innovative and decarbonised energy technology and social justice.

We need a whole government approach, a whole country approach, a global approach, working together and aligning our financial, economic, energy and social policies to first slow down global warming and then work towards carbon neutrality to save our planet.