Car Free Day

Thirty-four countries worldwide, 1,200 cities, 34 participating local councils in Malta and Gozo - these are the encouraging figures that can best describe the ever increasing popularity of Car Free Day. It can easily be said that besides being an environmental initiative, Car Free Day has also become a day of international awareness and collaboration.

The success of such an initiative depends on the interest it manages to create and this has surely been achieved. It is our goal to see wider participation even in the local events being planned as was the case over the past years.

This year's chosen theme is In Town Without My Car - Safe Streets For Children. Participating countries are being enticed to use this year's event as a platform for local authorities, organisations and associations all over Europe to promote their existing policies, initiatives and best practices on sustainable urban mobility; to launch new policies and initiatives.

It should also serve to raise citizens' awareness on the damages that current mobility trends generate on the environment and the quality of life; establish performing partnerships with local stakeholders; be part of a European wide campaign sharing a common goal and a common identity with other towns and cities in Europe and emphasise the local commitment towards sustainable urban transport policies.

When the European Commission decided to take on the initiative that was first held in France in 1998 it wanted to set in place a token initiative, which could, however, leave an indelible mark on our society.

Everyone agrees that Car Free Day alone can't and won't address any of the persistent problems that affect the environment around us. It takes much more to come to terms with most of the problems that we have created over the years. But the significance of Car Free Day lies in creating the urge of public participation in an area where this was not easily forthcoming until a few years ago.

And in that area, it is succeeding.

From a local perspective, it is encouraging to note that besides adhering to the Car Free Day, most of the participating local councils have also organised popular activities that will surely transform most of our normally busy roads into a hive of activities and fun.

The government is considering the event as forming part of a wider, more holistic approach to the various projects that it has undertaken. We are giving due importance to educating our younger generations and, with this in mind, we have launched the Eko-skola programme for local schools and, more recently, the revamped Xummiemu character. Incidentally, Xummiemu was widely used in promoting today's activities.

This increased awareness aimed towards our children led to an interesting project that was undertaken successfully by students from St Augustine's College. This particular project tackled air pollution and, after studies on air pollution in Malta, these students came up with a solution on how to reduce particles emitted as car exhaust in a cheap manner by creating the so-called Car Dust Grabber.

Besides placing first in expositions locally and abroad, these children are setting the example that there are still ways in which we can contribute towards cleaner air.

The government is also promoting the use of eco-friendly measures such as bio-diesel and the use of electric cars. As stated in last year's budget speech, a tender has been awarded to replace a number of cars from the current fleet of vehicles used by ministries with electric cars.

Moreover, a pilot project that will lead us to the collection of cooking oil for eventual production of bio-diesel will be implemented shortly. Even though to a lesser extent, once again this activity has this year been criticised by some quarters. Without entering into any useless controversies, I stress that this is a positive activity and should only be regarded as such.

We have done our utmost to minimise any negative impact that this day could have and in this regard I have to thank the police, local councils, the Public Transport Authority and the Public Transport Association for their invaluable help and cooperation.

Hopefully, today should contribute towards raising further awareness that we are all responsible for respecting our environment. By participating we are demonstrating, through positive, concrete action that we do care about improving the state of our environment in a way that future generations can benefit from cleaner air and seas.

Today should be the ideal occasion for people to be in control of our roads and on this day we must feel the positive impact on our environment if we had to adopt lasting measures favouring clean, better mass transportation systems, while becoming less dependent on the use of private cars.

May today be another small but important step towards a better and healthier future.

Mr Pullicino is Minister for Rural Affairs and the Environment.