ENVIRONMENT and Water Minister Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man has to explain why Malaysia is excluded from the United States Climate Action Summit to be held later this month, DAP’s Lim Guan Eng said.

The party’s secretary-general said the PAS minister in the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government has failed to push “green policies” to the extent that Malaysia is now seen as lagging behind neighbouring countries in environmental activism and mitigating climate change.

“Up to now, Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man has failed to explain why Vietnam can be invited, but Malaysia excluded from this summit. Tuan Ibrahim should wake up and set his vision on how to integrate climate change measures into the work of government agencies and the way forward to reclaim our “climate change” reputation.

“(He) has short-changed the country with his poor performance in pushing green policies until Malaysia is seen as inferior to Vietnam,” Lim said in a statement today.

Malaysia is not invited to the climate action summit that will draw leaders from 40 countries including Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam.

The summit, to be hosted by US President Joe Biden, will be held virtually on April 22 and 23.

Citing the criteria by the White House, Lim said only heads of countries that have demonstrated “strong climate leadership, are especially vulnerable to climate impacts, or are charting innovative pathways”, are invited.

Lim said this was a “sad joke” which showed Malaysia’s decline in environmental leadership and meant that the US sees Malaysia more as a “dumping ground for plastic waste than a strategic environmental partner”.

The Bagan MP said this was because Malaysia had failed to continue the policies of Pakatan Harapan’s environment minister Yeo Bee Yin, who implemented a ban on imported plastic waste and returned shipping containers of the waste back to their country of origin.

“Yeo had also been instrumental in the amendment to the classification of plastic wastes under the Basel Convention, to restrict the import of such waste.

“The PN government (however) has allowed Malaysia to slowly become the US dumping ground for ‘clean’ plastic waste,” Lim said, referring to Tuan Ibrahim’s recent statement that Malaysia was importing ‘clean, homogeneous’ plastic waste which met the import conditions.

Malaysia’s exclusion from the summit has also been highlighted by former prime minister Najib Razak, who demanded an explanation from Putrajaya. – April 6, 2021.