On 24 November the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM) hosted a meeting co-organised by the UN International Strategy for Risk Reduction in St Julian, Malta, in which parliamentarians from France, Malta, Algeria, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Senegal, Turkey and Uganda, including the Maltese Focal Point of GLOBE Europe, Hon. Joseph Falzon (click here for a full list of participants) adopted the Malta Declaration of the Commitment by Parliamentarians to COP15 and Beyond (click here to dowload the Declaration, also as a pdf)

The Declaration voices the parliamentarians' commitment to proactively invite their governments "to demonstrate the utmost political will to ensure the positive outcome of COP 15; exercise our responsibility in national oversight over the implementation of COP 15 decisions, encourage all parliamentarians as role models to combat corruption, to embrace transparency and accountability at all levels of handling disaster related and climate adaptation funding with strict adherence to the code of conduct, national quality standards and international best practices; recognize that measures for climate change adaptation will contribute not only to the prevention of problems resulting from increasingly scarce resources, which may lead to conflicts and local displacements, specially related to water and land, but will also represent an opportunity to create employment and sustain development; use all the available instruments of their legislative bodies, including gender mainstreaming, to ensure disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation measures are integrated in national planning and budget processes", among other goals.

On that basis, they called upon:

"All the Parties to the Conference to ensure immediate action to finalize a legally-binding agreement, with progressive and accessible financing mechanisms adequate for reaching the goals of disaster risk reduction, coupled with accessible appropriate technology, to ensure availability based on region-specific vulnerabilities.

The private sector, civil society and other relevant stakeholders to use their influence to ensure the implementation of COP 15 decisions and achieving and realizing their national goals.

The private sector to set aside no less than 10% of corporate social responsibility funding for the specific use for disaster risk management and climate change adaptation programmes and projects."