Climate Change and Regional Economic Development

The half-day seminar, organised by the Centre for European Studies in collaboration with the Academy for the Development of a Democratic Environment (AZAD), was held on the morning of 11 July 2008 in Floriana, Malta.

The seminar’s audience numbered around 80 persons, most of them representing larger organisations, diplomatic corps, government’s advisory committee on climate change and ministries, the main environmental NGOs, unions and business organisations, research institutions, as well as the Nationalist Party and Alternattiva Demokratika.

The aim of the seminar was threefold: to provide an update on climate change in the Mediterranean and sub-Saharan African regions; to trace its likely impact on economies and regional development, with a special focus on the hospitality industry in the Mediterranean and migration from Africa; and to show how business and Maltese NGOs might make use of opportunities provided by the EU, in general, and EPP policies in particular, to address the challenges ahead.

The speakers were chosen accordingly. The seminar was introduced by CES director, Tomi Huhtanen, who outlined the EPP’s commitment to sustainable development, prosperity and win-win strategies for Europe and its international partners.

The first panel featuring Laura Schmidt, an advisor with DG Development and Patrice Miran, a project officer with Plan Bleu (Mediterranean Action Plan) traced climate change in the two regions. Panellists addressed issues of sub-Saharan Africa, with particular reference to countries from where some of the largest groups of irregular immigrants currently originate and showed the dismal economic scenarios for the Mediterranean tourist industry if climate change was not addressed effectively.

In the second panel, Simon Busuttil MEP, rapporteur for the EP on migration, Klaus Liepert, director for sub-Saharan Africa of the Hanns Seidel Stiftung and Damien Tressallet, research fellow of Fondation Pour l’Innovation Politique, Paris, placed the human and economic challenges of climate change within a European political framework., outlined some model projects conducted by HSS to mitigate and adapt to climate change and outlined how regional institutional innovation within the Mediterranean could be part of an effective political-economic strategy.

The seminar was closed with a keynote address by the Malta Government Minister of Resources and Rural Affairs, George Pullicino, who spoke, among other subjects, of the importance of a holistic approach to the management of maritime affairs, along the lines broached by the EC’s Blue Paper on the subject, if the challenge of climate change were to be successfully addressed.

Among the topics raised during discussion were special considerations to the airline industry for a tourist-based economy’s, since excessive taxation could inhibit the possibilities of investing in innovative research; impact of the free-market pricing of natural resources like water on the mobility of the affluent middle class;

There was also an issue raised by the Malta government’s nominee at the Convention on the Future of Europe: could any Euro-Mediterranean partnership succeed, even on climate change, if cultural dialogue were not given its due place, and might it not even be an easier place where to start joint projects with this in mind?

The participants’ conclusions were that CES and AZAD need to continue facilitating the dialogue and cooperation between business organisations and NGOs on climate change; prepare for publication the interventions of all the speakers, since there was a considerable demand for the whole texts and explore the possibilities of making an annual event in Malta or a seminar on various aspects of climate change;

Conference received wide media coverage, both before and after the event.