Government hopes to table the final draft of the Climate Change Bill in parliament by May.

Government hopes to table the final draft of the Climate Change Bill in parliament by May.

Climate Change Minister Aiyaz-Sayed Khaiyum highlighted in parliament that they are now in the final stages following an extensive period of consultations both online and face to face, before a final consultation is held in April.

“We are currently in the stage of collating all those responses and some of the suggestions have been very useful and we are looking at putting some of that into a further re-draft of the draft bill and we will then go out again to members of the public by having some direct public consultations to fine tune the bill again.”

Sayed-Khaiyum also touched on the benefits of having the Climate Change Bill adding that through a robust legislation government can introduce new tools and mechanisms to deal with emerging and unprecedented challenges brought about through the impacts of climate change.

“Having a national climate change act will mobilize a cross sectorial response to climate change, improve our ability to understand it, plan for it, avert risks and help us to unlock new opportunities for our new private sector and increase our access to emerging carbon markets. We’ve talked about carbon trading and this climate change draft bill addresses those issues.”

Sayed-Khaiyum says that they hope to have the Climate Change Act approved by parliament and launched as one of the milestones of Fiji becoming a nation that is 50 years old with the launch of the climate change act.