KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 24 — Malaysia’s commitment to reduce its carbon emission intensity by 45 per cent by year 2030 can only be fulfilled through the involvement of diverse stakeholders, said Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar.
He said this while launching Asean’s premier conference, Go ESG Asean Corporate Sustainability Virtual Summit 2020 yesterday, according to a joint press statement from his ministry and the organiser, United Nations Global Compact Network Malaysia (GCMY).
The two-day conference involving high-level government officials, United Nations (UN) leaders and public officials serves as an avenue to rethink and reconstruct the way businesses are conducted by shifting to new and innovative business models and operations towards rebuilding a better and sustainable future.
The theme of the conference is “The Businesses of Recovering Better - A Resilient & Sustainable Asean by Design”.
Wan Junaidi said Covid-19 presented a window of opportunity for businesses to take the initiatives to influence value chains by sourcing responsibly and addressing environmental issues, in the effort to achieve green growth while sustaining development.
“Apart from Sustainable Development, in further promoting our individual national environment agenda embodied in the Paris Agreement 2015, Malaysia ratified the Agreement in April 2016,” he said.
He said 188 out of 197 countries had ratified the Paris agreement which calls for limiting global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius.
To date, Malaysia has achieved a 33 per cent carbon emission intensity of gross domestic product (GDP) reduction relative to 2005 level, he noted.
Moving forward, GCMY believes Malaysia should initialise the small and medium enterprise (SME) Carbon Footprint Audit Report, “which can be beneficial to detect the sources and to find the mitigation measures to address Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emissions”.
Its Malaysia and Brunei executive director, Faroze Nadar, said SMEs making up close to 98 per cent of total businesses in Malaysia, formed a huge part of the supply chain and have the potential to make a huge impact on sustainability.
“To help them approach sustainability in a way that is more appropriate for small businesses, we have created an online resource - The SME-SDG Toolkit.
“Access is free courtesy of our sponsor, Sarawak Energy Bhd,” he said.
— Bernama
