The Malta Competition and Consumer Affairs Authority hosted a highly informative seminar to mark World Standards Day. Titled Shared Vision for a Better World – Standards for the Changing Climate, it was held at the Malta Chamber in Valletta.
As the Director General of the Standards and Metrology Institute within the MCCAA, George Cutajar, outlined in his introductory address, the event was “not just a celebration of standards but a call to action; an opportunity for us to reflect on the role that standards play in addressing one of the most pressing challenges of our time: climate change”.
Standards, he affirmed, have a role in a unified global response to climate change. In the face of greenwashing – business claims to reduce emissions, adopt sustainable practices and minimise their carbon footprints – businesses undermine consumer trust and, more importantly, can slow down the collective global efforts to combat climate change.
This is why standards are essential because they “provide a common language and set of criteria for organisations to follow, ensuring that environmental claims are backed by measurable, transparent and verifiable actions”. Mr Cutajar went on to give several examples of standards by both the European (CEN) and international (ISO) bodies that seek to incorporate climate action and managing environmental responsibilities.
He then outlined some challenges, especially those faced by small and medium sized enterprises, including “a need for greater awareness and capacity building”, where the MCCAA plays an indispensable role. While “the climate challenge is vast, so too are the solutions. And standards are among the most powerful tools we have to ensure that those solutions are effective, scalable and consistent across borders,” he said.
Managing impacts
In her keynote message to the seminar, Zakiah Kassam, chairperson, ISO Environmental Management – Technical Committee ISO/TC 207, stressed that at the heart of all the ISO environmental management standards is managing impacts and enhancing quality of life.
In aligning action to a shared vision, Ms Kassam, whose committee is responsible for drawing up and refining the ISO 14001 standards, said soberly that she was not sure that everybody understands what climate trajectory the world is on. Another reason is that, in such a complex undertaking, it is difficult to understand where to begin.
“If you don’t know where to start, start with energy because the climate crisis is fundamentally an energy crisis where we have to get a grip on how much energy we’re consuming and the sources of energy that we’re using,” she said. She then dwelt on greenwashing and ended her intervention talking about net zero.
While carbon offsets are an intermediary solution, the ultimate goal has to be to get to net zero, with her technical committee currently in the process of turning the ISO Net Zero Guidelines into an international standard. She also pointed to ISO 14030 standards on green debt instruments as a programme out of the box for policymakers.
“In a world where development of new regulations can often take a period of years, ISO standards can accelerate that process by giving you something that is the basis of a programme that can quickly be enacted by legislation, or at least by policymakers, even without the legislative layer that needs to go on top of it,” Ms Kassam said.
Ensuring a level playing field
Malta’s Ambassador for Climate Action Prof. Simone Borg said that standards play a valuable, fundamental role in reaching set goals and to accelerate the process. “Standards are all about quality and the reason why we need standards is to ensure quality,” she said.
It is more a question of finding the right pathways applying standards that make sense for all types of states. She asked why it is taking so long for us to reach carbon neutrality. While EU member states have been prolific in leading the way in setting the harsh, ambitious goals, what they found they needed to comply to reach these goals is to ensure that the standards are there.
Standards are the link to achieving carbon neutrality through the decarbonisation process that we have to go through, which she said is a change in the economic model and the way we run our economies. The Cross Border Adjustment Mechanism is also very much linked to standards to ensure that products on the EU market are faithfully in line with reducing carbon emissions.
Products that do not comply with these standards are distorting competition with the result that there is no level playing field in the market. This has serious repercussions which EU governments are quite concerned about. “We need to ensure that what we place on the market is meeting the goals that we speak of and having the legislative framework to ensure that the products do meet these standards is the way to truly ensure that decarbonisation is achieved,” Prof. Borg said.
Standardisation: the facts
Prof. Borg then joined the first panel that discussed: Standards as a solution for a climate-resilient Malta. The other members of the panel were: Phyllis Farrugia, Head of Strategy – Project Green; Saviour Vassallo, Acting Team Leader – Climate Action Authority; Simon Farrugia, Senior Officer Environmental Permitting Unit – Environment Resources Authority; and Perit David Xuereb, Chairperson – Malta ESG Alliance.
Success stories
The theme of the second panel was: Use of climate change-oriented standards within the local perspective; success stories. The members of the panel were: Dr Marthese Portelli, CEO – Malta Chamber of Commerce; Ede Kossari Tarnik, Environmental & Energy Champion – ST Microelectronics (Malta) Ltd; Rachel Xuereb, Associate – ADI Associates; Antoine Gatt, Lecturer, Faculty of the Built Environment – University of Malta; and Mr Cutajar (MCCAA).
The seminar ended with questions from the audience.
