Our welfare, our environment

The European Movement (Malta) is at one with those who want to safeguard the welfare of the Maltese people. We believe that the welfare of the Maltese will be drastically diminished if each one of us were to enjoy the widest freedom, but not a clean environment.

Last Friday's TV programme Xarabank brought into focus the Maghtab rubbish tip and possible solutions of dealing with it. We cannot but sympathise with Winston Zahra, one of Malta's leading businessmen in the vital tourism sector, for being so concerned.

Maghtab's solution could put part of his investment - including the livelihood of some of his employees - on the line.

Harry Vassallo, chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika, was clear and articulate on what has to be done. He also roundly stated the cost of dealing with Maghtab, around Lm80 million. Calling a spade a spade, he also made it clear that this issue would have never surfaced in the absence of the broader debate on EU membership.

We believe that the situation is much worse than what was shown on television. There are some areas of grave concern that need to be stated roundly. They have already been pointed out on various occasions in the past by other people and we claim no originality for repeating this exercise on this page.

Hence, though we fully sympathise with the grave concern shown by the likes of Mr Zahra and Dr Vassallo on new dump sites, we believe that the problem is wider still because environmental degradation has been actually consuming human life and is a life-threatening issue on a much broader front.

We also fully support the aim and the people who struggle for sustainable development. Economic progress must be done in such a way that it will not endanger us or future generations.

But let us take a snapshot of our environment:

¤ Unrestricted and illegal quarrying;

¤ A reluctance to stop quarrying and begin importing building and road material from overseas;

¤ The non-existence of a system to recycle waste, particularly that generated by the building industry;

¤ Noise pollution;

¤ Dangerous diesel and fuel fumes let off in the atmosphere by heavy vehicles, particularly by our picturesque but aging buses;

¤ Too many cars on the road;

¤ Dangerous fumes let into the air by decomposition, sometimes the burning of urban waste;

¤ Tonnes of old and used batteries decomposing out there somewhere;

¤ Unrestricted use of pesticides and artificial fertilisers;

¤ A contaminated food chain;

¤ The indiscriminate use of certain medicines, including antibiotics, in animal husbandry which make their way to the meat we eat;

¤ Drainage spilling into some of our key bays;

¤ A completely ruined water table;

¤ Indiscriminate and illegal boreholing and extraction of ground water;

¤ Large amounts of nitrates, higher than permissible by WHO, in our drinking water;

To confront these problems we have four main difficulties:

¤ A government that has shown itself to be lethargic and lacking leadership in this sector;

¤ Alternattiva Demokratika which has the right ideas but is not represented in Parliament;

¤ An Opposition which, when in government, in both the remote and recent past, helped create the problem and which now fishes in troubled waters knowing all too well that drastic measures make the government unpopular.

¤ A bureaucracy that is unwieldy.

The state of the environment is what we Maltese richly deserve because we have done little to stop the rot. It is time however for us to stand up and begin to change it. Do not wait for the right sort of leadership this country needs in this hour to emerge from the established political order, Government and Opposition included. They have failed the test.

They have parcelled out the media among themselves, treated civil society with contempt, left no free space for free thinkers to express themselves, promoted mediocrity at all levels and compete against one another for power with a ferocity of two dogs in an illegal dog fight.

EU opportunity not to be missed

In the face of this reality one added reason among a host of other good reasons why citizens should ignore their party allegiances and vote with their brains for EU membership is precisely the environment.

A good and healthy environment improves our lifestyle and welfare. It makes our islands more attractive to tourism and higher incomes are generated. It produces jobs. Nothing but good comes out of it.

¤ The EU enforces a regulatory framework in the environmental field which whatever our political "class" may think about it, they will have to enforce, step-by-step as we say in Maltese pass wara pass, one measure at a time.

¤ What is better is that the EU makes available millions of euros in grants to help us overcome the problems. And let us not kid ourselves any longer: cleaning up the mess may produce a bill that does not simply run into millions but in hundreds of millions.

¤ EU law gives citizens the right to challenge their national governments in court if they do not enforce the Environment Directives, just as any citizen today can seek to protect his human rights in Strasbourg if he believes that the national judicial system has failed to do so.

The unfortunate thing about it all is that there is no other way Malta can resolve the issue outside the membership context. The country's finances have been bled white and trying to mend them has led to unprecedented burdens on taxpayers particularly the enterprising middle class and ordinary workers. In a few words, two-thirds of the population.

The future outside membership has two implications for these people. First, action to clean up the environment, which their education has taught them to cherish so dearly, will have to crawl to a snail's pace or be postponed or curtailed altogether.

It is hard to imagine that "nothing" would be done. But not enough will be done for lack of means. Something could indeed be worked out but taxes would have to be raised.

The economy outside membership will most probably grow at a slower rate. It may even contract as a result of the shock of refusing membership. The financial resources for the state will therefore be more limited.

Besides, the environment competes for resources with a number of key sectors: health and the new hospital; education, an essential pillar of our economy, and the pension time-bomb that threatens to hit, come retirement age, that very stratum of the population which is being called upon to make the most sacrifices in order to clear the mess.

We need to jump off this ring-a-ring-of-roses (thorns!). We think that this can be done by starting now to take the drastic decisions. Some years ago, many will recall, Dr Stanley Zammit, former Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, began to introduce such measures, gently.

A concerted education campaign was begun in our schools. Efforts were made to begin selecting urban waste. A greater consciousness about the environment was cultivated among the public at large. We even started collecting used batteries and other dangerous stuff for special collection.

As the electorate would have it, Dr Zammit, probably one of the few decent politicians who had ever tried to change our lives in a positive and yet unpaternalistic manner, was washed off the seat of decision-making.

Many believed that his younger and perhaps more energetic successors would take his torch and continue to run the extra mile to arrive where we all want to be one day.

Navel-gazing replaced sound policy-making. The Planning Authority became the object of national concern as politicians grappled with the problem of delivering favours to their backers. Larger environmental threats simply paled into insignificance.

Now we have reached crisis point and so, consonant with Malta's political history, we will begin to act. We never try to pre-empt crisis. We always wait until they have made it to our parlours and have become life-threatening.

We are still arguing. But the plug has to be pulled somewhere and the action must begin.

What has the EU done for its member states?

When we urge people to help Malta join the EU if they wish to see environmental standards improve we do this by reference to the experience of other countries which have joined the Union. Scaremongers will not tell you these stories they will try to convince you how bad the EU is because it takes away our sovereignty.

Now let's be frank about this too. Our 'sovereignty', or the freedom to live our full rights in safety, are threatened by our own political establishment, not by the EU.

Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland, which account for only a fifth of the EU population, received millions of grants from the Cohesion Fund and the Regional Fund in order to set up environmental protection projects and to protect their natural habitats.

The experience of these countries shows that these millions of euros pouring into their economies had a multiplier effect. The firms which secured the contracts employed thousands of workers and invested a lot of money in setting up the projects.

At the same time, however, these projects proved to be a source of long-term employment. A waste recycling plant has to be operated in the long term in order to do what it has been set up to do.

The changes in the environment as a result of these measures will take a long time to become effective. Some changes are immediately visible, others less so. The long-term beneficial effects on ordinary citizens are obvious:

¤ Lower costs on the country and on the citizens in terms of reduced health hazards and health care costs to counter the negative effects. Some cannot.

¤ Fewer man-days lost in the economy;

¤ More rights and freedoms to the individual in terms of a healthier environment, an improved welfare;

¤ The country becomes more attractive to investment - particularly in the service sector and tourism;

¤ More jobs are created in the economy as a result of the multiplier effect of these positive measures;

¤ Creation of permanent jobs in the environmental protection field;

¤ Protection of our natural habitat for us all to enjoy;

¤ Safeguarding a better and much improved quality of life for us and future generations

We believe something like Lm100 million are needed to successfully complete the first phase of the national environmental regeneration programme that we require.

It would be useful for the opponents of EU membership to spell out from where this amount will be forthcoming if Malta stays out of the EU.