The government will embark on a scoping study to assess whether there is a need for a Climate Change Act, according to Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change Minister Yeo Bee Yin.
Yeo said today that the study, which will be conducted through a collaboration between the Green Technology Corporation (GreenTech Malaysia) and the British government, is expected to be completed in 24 months.
“After we have signed this collaboration, the first thing we will do is the scoping study on whether or not there is a need (for an act), and how we do that.
“By January 2020, we will roughly have an outcome of the first phase of the study,” she told a press conference after the exchange of letters between GreenTech Malaysia and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Putrajaya today.
The ceremony was held in conjunction with British Special Representative for Climate Change Nick Bridge’s courtesy call on the minister.
Should the act come into force, Yeo said, the main impact would be on institutionalising climate change actions across the private sector.
She said the four-year collaboration programme would also benefit Malaysia in terms of addressing critical climate change initiatives, including institutional framework, as well as capacity building through skills-share and secondment of technical assistance.
“It will also allow Malaysia to study and adapt the UK 2050 Pathway Carbon Calculator to the Malaysian context,” she said.
Bridge, meanwhile, pointed out that Britain has just celebrated the 10th anniversary of its 2008 Climate Change Act.
He added that Britain had set a long-term goal of decarbonising its economy to reach what would be a global average carbon footprint for each citizen.
“We have statutory carbon budgets. So every five years, we must reduce our footprint. We are halfway to our decarbonising goal,” he said.
The collaboration programme under the UK Partnering for Accelerated Climate Transitions (UKPACT) Cooperation aims to strengthen, promote and develop climate change and low carbon transition collaboration between the two countries on the basis of equality and mutual benefit.
