P’pang joins Global Covenant of Mayors
Published on: Sunday, June 16, 2019
By: Kan Yaw Chong
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Out of despair over the misery of recurring big floods, Penampang has taken the lead to join the Global Covenant of Mayors sworn to decarbonise the world.
In the words of District Council Deputy Chairman, Legacy @ Ignatius John Matayun, “We are more than interested, more than keen.”
Besides free membership, the benefits include knowledge transfer, exposing Penampang to showcase of best practices nationally and internationally, technical assistance to make a baseline of emission inventory, calculate target-setting for emission reduction, do risk and vulnerability assessment, make a climate action plan, help to do monitoring, climate financing access and project implementation itself which will effectively raise the capacity of the District Council to deal with reduce the extreme climatic impacts at source such as its infamous deluge.
In a meeting on May 23, Ignatius John Matayun announced that it would join the network of 10,000-member Global Covenant of Mayors on Climate and Energy (GCoM), a coalition of cities across the world committed to the creation of a future low-carbon world.
In attendance include GCoM’s top regional experts – UTM’s Professor Ho, a Malaysian authority on low-carbon economy and Jakarta-hailed Asih Budiati who said she is actually wearing three hats: (1) as Regional Manager of GCoM Southeast Asia Secretariat based in Jakarta; (2) as the Technical Co-ordinator of International Urban Co-operation (IUC) for three countries – Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam, and (3) representing the United Cities and Local Government Asia Pacific.
Prof Ho: “Prepare a comprehensive plan, don’t do fire-fighting.”
A historic meeting: Freddy
Freddy Ekol, a Council member and prime mover on the ground to make this happen, lauded the historical meeting which may change the destiny of Penampang for the better.
“Most of us are not familiar with GCoM, an international body with members all over the world and Asia.”
On why he has actively pushed Penampang District Council to get into the act, Freddy cited the inaugural GCoM meeting in Johor Baru in March in which he was picked by the District Council to attend.
“I was moved by the very meaningful objective of the GcoM. There, I confided especially with Prof Ho about Penampang’s big flooding problem and I said we must address this issue because this body has experts in climate change well-honed in mitigation and adaptation.
“I think this body can help us solve the problem,” Freddy addressed the Council at the outset.
However, he acknowledged the mastermind behind him is Sabahan Boyd Joeman, Director of Environment of Johor-based Iskandar Regional Development Authority, which GCoM has hailed as a successful showcase of low-carbon society covering five local governments collectively called Iskandar Malaysia.
Darell Leiking to launch GCoM meet
“Boyd talked to Datuk Darell Lieking, Member of Parliament for Penampang and Minister of International Trade and Industry, who has consented to officiate the historic GCoM meet on July 18-20 at the Hyatt Kinabalu Regency.”
Ignatius Matayun, who chaired the meeting, said of the decision:
“We are delighted to be part of your organisation (GCoM). This one included a lot of good will. But if you look at the flood problem in Penampang, the first thing we can blame is of course global warming, climate change and all that but if we look beyond that we have inflicted the injury on ourselves.
“Number 1 – hill-cutting, reclamation, all these have changed the tributaries, we are very glad that you (GCoM) came here and then help us feed inputs which we can bring up to the government of the day so that Penampang will not continue to suffer.
“In the end, we have preventive measures, the sense of warning, awareness that we are able to do something to sort of mitigate the situation even if it may not totally rid the floods.”
Councillor Winnie Jimis.
What is GCoM?
GCoM Regional Manager Asih explained: “It is a coalition of cities around the world started in 2017, originally merged between two big networks of cities – Compact of Mayors based in the United States while Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate Change and Energy is based in Europe.
“So it is really a coalition of two big local government networking from two big areas. This is their mission – they serve the cities and local governments by mobilising and supporting ambitious measurable actions by working with cities, regional networks and other partners,” she said.
“From the US, Europe, we go further beyond the whole globe. So currently we have almost 10,000 cities become GCoM members in 129 countries representing more than 10pc of global population. We believe that by 2030, all the cities are our city members can collectively reduce 1.4 billion tonnes of emissions.”
Why is GCom important?
“After the December 2015 Paris agreement was signed, the whole world recognised for a country to achieve their national determined contribution that they committed in the Paris Agreement.
“It can only be achieved by support from the local governments because a country cannot do it by itself. Most of the time, a local government has a specific local need, different target or emission source.
“It is much easier to work starting from local government which in the end it will support a country to achieve their national goal.”
On what will be required of cities joining the GOcM, Asih said:
“First, the Mayor or the President signs commitment to GCoM – a one-page commitment just saying that as Mayor, I am supporting my city to reduce the emissions in my region at least at the same level as the national target.”
“Two – to submit a climate action plan including emission inventory target setting which includes adaptation, mitigation and of course the actions on how to reduce emissions and then implement the city climate action and conduct periodic monitoring but the whole activity will be supported by GCoM because sometimes cities are saying that they don’t know how to do this. They are afraid after signing a commitment they cannot perform this activity themselves and become reluctant to sign the agreement.”
“You should not worry because we will give you the capacity building on CAP development the overall cycle,” Asih assured Penampang District Council.
Penampang District Council Deputy Chairman Ignatius John Matayun (right) announcing the decision to join GCoM with Executive Officer, Tang.
Prof Ho, a top Malaysian low-carbon expert comes in to help
Prof Ho, a planning expert and Head or Director of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) Asia said:
“My Centre actually does a lot of climate change studies, especially in preparation of what we call low carbon strategy blue prints for big cities such as Kuala Lumpur, PutraJaya and all the five local authorities in Johor Bahru under the big regional authority of Iskandar Regional Development Authority.
“These are the few cities that have been in the forefront in Peninsula Malaysia in this kind of climate change action plan.”
More recently, Prof Ho said he did a low carbon action blue print for Pengerang because the Mayor was very concerned how to prevent high carbon pollution in the area and other environmental impacts and just mid may, historical heritage city Muar wanted him to “look into how can Muar develop incorporating climate change,” he noted.
Do a comprehensive plan: Incorporate a Low Carbon Blueprint to development plan
“Maybe some of you are a bit confused with the word climate action plan and other plans because normally what you have here are what we call Development Plan which gives us a direction for development but the problem is actually when we do this type of plan we do a projection until year 2030 or 2040, we don’t look into how do we decarbonise,” he said.
“If we calculate carbon emissions and we can decarbonise and improve the benefits of your city by looking at the sustainability perspective, then we can actually come out with a better plan, we do one development plan and one action plan together. So that is the thing that we are doing.
“The good thing about this kind of study, is we call it Science to Action, meaning to say nowadays I think as urban problems become more complicated we need to solve them more systematically or more comprehensively.”
Don’t do ‘fire-fighting’
“We cannot do fire fighting, solving one problem and then the next problem comes up.
“Another good thing about GCoM so far is it’s free, it’s free in the sense that you don’t need to pay a membership not like C40 (initiative for innovative actions on climate change), they base on your population you have to pay a certain sum of money every year to be a member but this one you don’t have to pay so I think it is good for Malaysian cities to join at the same time we can benefit from their knowledge. I think that is a good point,” Prof Ho said.
GCoM Regional Manager Ms Asih Budiati speaking while Freddy Ekol listens.
Fruitful meeting: GCoM Regional Manager Asked to comment on the meeting, Asih said:
“I think it is a very fruitful meeting. You can see the support from the Council members are very good and we can see the awareness. Even today we can see the baseline awareness is there.
“From what I understand, Winnie (Jimis), what she is doing with the river, with wastes, with all these kind of environmental quality improvement the very basic things are there so now I think is probably how do we do it in such a comprehensive manner, not only from project to project basis. But I think we really have to look at the whole policy direction, the whole plan to get Penampang on board on this climate action plan. I think that is important to me.”
Flood experts to speak at Penampang GCoM meet: Prof Ho
Solving Penampang’s infamous big floods ranked high as Council members kept citing it.
Ignatius said deluge strikes three to four times a year.
Asked if the flood problem will be part of GCoM’s inventory study?
Prof Ho said: “Flood certainly is an issue. Usually when we do any climate action plan of course we have to be issue oriented. I would strongly suggest that GCoM should bring in speakers who are experts in flooding.
“I think Ms Asih (turning to Asih), for this purpose, since Penampang is very concerned about one issue – firstly flooding, secondly wastes, I think we really need to get EU experts who are in these areas. I think they can share their best practices so Penampang can learn.”
Asih chipped in: “Maybe not only from the EU but also from the region. It will be good to hear from Surabaya which is very good in composting and from Vietnam which is very good in biomass.”
Prof Ho added: “The same goes to wastes because at the end of the day it is knowledge sharing. I think the word is bankable – whatever you do, it must be some form of investment returns even for waste recycling.”
Penampang can achieve a lot: Asih
Chipping in further, Asih said: “I think today’s meeting is very good, I am very happy with the positive response from the Council and directly the deputy Chairman (Igantius) committing to GCoM so that’s showing very positive.
“There are a lot of initiatives currently happening in Penampang so the Council just have to make it action and really get them implemented so I am very much positive that we could achieve a lot of things here with Penampang and I hope you (Daily Express) will still maintain the same support to us till the end of this project.”
Freddy Ekol: I feel overwhelmed
Meanwhile, Freddy Ekol, the prime mover on the ground to make GCoM happen in Penampang, said: “First and foremost I would like to thank our GCoM delegate from GCoM namely Prof Ho and Asih and Rati for making GCoM a reality in Penampang.
“I am so happy that I feel overwhelmed by the positive response from members of the Council and the best thing for me is the acceptance of the invitation by the Chairman of the District Council of Penampang.
“So from there we are ready to move forward to address the issue of climate change but specially we want the agenda in the July 18-20 meeting to address the flooding issue and carbon emission in Penampang. I am very happy.”
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