A structure plan writ in stone

It is rather narrow-minded to propose that the Verdala golf course is the magic needed to make our tourist industry bloom again. It is hard to imagine how the national economy could benefit from this golf course, given that the community would have to pay for it in more valuable ways than money can tell.

What is wrong with a golf course in Malta is the resource demand, which is exactly opposite to that which our tiny islands can support; namely land, water and a favourable climate, meaning that such voracious demands can only be met at the sacrifice of something precious - the people-nature balance.

Perhaps the highest visible price that the community both present and future will have to pay is the surrender of a vast land area of rich agricultural and environmental importance. So much so, that this land is classified in the Structure Plan as Core Agriculture Area (report of survey Vol. 1, 1990, K1.35; 2.) and described in the subsequent sections as "... historical landscape... a distinctive landscape where fields are terraced down hill slopes... makes particularly pleasant approaches to some hilly towns such as Mdina/Rabat".

Urban sprawl and industrial development have been taking their toll on the human-nature balance in Malta since the late 1950s and in the course of events development consumed nearly half of the available Maltese cropland, which dropped dramatically from over 20,400ha in 1957 to just over 10,700ha in 2001 (according the DOA and NSO).

It was to stop this wanton destruction of the natural environment that spurred the evolution of a Structure Plan. "To safeguard land of agricultural value" (report of survey,Vol.1, Part K sec 2.2; 2 p.32) is the policy. It is alarming now that certain members of the same administration, that spent hundreds of thousands of liri in the late 1980s and early 1990s to draw it up, have the cheek to attack their own baby. What is even more worrying is the fact that those who are entrusted to protect these little environmental treasures from ruinous exploitation seem to be cracking under the pressure. One would have expected Mepa to rule out the consideration of a Verdala golf course development at its inception, as it plainly violates the Structure Plan policy, and failure to stop it will shame Mepa as a weakling against powerful arm-twisting giants.

Agricultural land is a national resource. It is a heritage and should be preserved and treated as such. The government should cherish the people's wishes to be able to buy locally grown crops. We should be proud of our local produce and we should also be proud to have more of it to offer to the tourists visiting these shores. Agricultural land (and its produce) is a very important resource that contributes to our self-sufficiency. It is not fair that for the sake of a golf course we should be forced to buy imported vegetables when they could be grown locally. Neither should we be happy with more intensive farming as in the end it would impair the safety of our food, our water supply, the environment and our own health.

According to Minister George Pullicino "the next few years will be critical for Mediterranean agriculture not least because of the emphasis being placed on quality and food safety... the future of Mediterranean products will increasingly depend on quality and products bearing a designation of origin, added value, food safety and consumer awareness".

Selling off our agricultural land is in environmental terms squandering our life-supporting capital. It will reduce the country's ability to produce enough variety to ensure the quality standards that the future customer would look for, like preference for local organic and GMO-free produce. It will make us depend on food imports and overseas food policies which may not be to our liking.

Future generations could suffer even more bitterly from the effect of today's mindless actions on our natural environment. We seem to forget the reality of the looming threat of global warming could have on our already fragile and rather fragmented agriculture. Nobody knows exactly what global warming has in store for us but it is quite realistic to expect less rainwater, longer drier and hotter spells, while higher seawater levels could directly or indirectly, as a result of saltwater seepage, delete another chunk of sensitive low-lying cropland.

The administration is aware of the challenges of global warming on our agriculture. Mr Pullicino said in an address to the First Euro Mediterranean Conference for Agriculture Ministers: "Malta... suffers from the same severe shortages in water supply, shares the same concerns regarding climatic change and global warming..." What logical sense does it make therefore to push the current state of affairs more and more towards the limit of what is sustainable?"

Regardless of the promises of sustainable development, the silence of the administration seems to suggest a tacit acquiescence. Was all high talk about sustainable development just political lip service to the growing environmentally aware community?

The time has come for the environment ministry to show us it means what it preaches. Nothing more than the present issue challenges so glaringly the definition of "sustainable development" - "meeting the present needs without compromising the needs of the future generations". The project can only go ahead in blatant violation of this principle. This is the pudding and we wait to see the proof!

The Structure Plan was hailed as a landmark in the development of the Maltese community who in those years realised the need to correct the splurge of our countryside's exploitation and to start regarding our natural habitat in a new light. It was a sign of the times heralding a new era of earth-resource consciousness that had spurred the late Rev. Dr Benjamin Tonna, the then head of Discern to write: "It was these people (the Maltese) who had introduced the Structure Plan, assigning to it a central place in their culture. It was the people who had thus planted in their culture a permanent response to the threat to their habitat".

The Structure Plan was a wise step in the right direction and Fr Tonna continued in a published paper: "Effective response... (to the threat on their habitat)... would only materialise when these people adopted lifestyles that prioritised care of their habitat over growth of their economy. At that point the Maltese people would have adopted a way of life that would derive meaning from sustainable development rather than from unbridled consumption" (Rev. B. Tonna, Managing The Habitat. The Case of Malta - in Materialità Ecologica e Sviluppo Sostenibile, p.74).

These words of wisdom resound emphatically today in this struggle between selfish interests and conservation of natural resources. One sure hopes that the Maltese community and the administration realise the worthiness of the Structure Plan and that good sense will prevail over the foolishness that is threatening, besides other things, the survival of Maltese agriculture.