Floundering in shallow waters

Malta's attempt at becoming the seat of Nicolas Sarkozy's Union for the Mediterranean failed, although we got the consolation prize of a deputy secretary general. We still have no idea who he or she might be. Are you, who spoke somewhat enthusiastically of Sarkozy's idea when it was first mooted, disappointed at the way in which things have turned out?

Lately I was not expecting a better outcome. The choice of Barcelona rather than Malta as the seat of the secretariat was just a natural confirmation of the fact that Sarkozy's original idea, which I was enthusiastic about, has been successfully whittled down to just, if fortune smiles, an enhancement of the Barcelona process, as the development of Euro-Mediterranean relationships has come to be called.

Sarkozy had put forward the dream of a Mediterranean union that would serve as a launch pad towards the eventual creation of a Euro-African bloc that would indeed be comparable in size and strength to its American and Asian competitors.

Out of this really mountain-sized dream there has emerged just the mouse of projects somewhat larger than the European Union was already financing in the Mediterranean through the Barcelona process over the past dozen years or so.

Alfred Sant has been proven right in his somewhat cynical response, in contrast with my optimism, in the dialogue between us at AZAD on the morrow of Sarkozy's election.

Given this drastic fade-out of a once colourful dream, I was not even disappointed at the locational prize having gone to Catalonia. The loss might even strengthen our hand when questing after some more significant agency for placement in our island, possibly, if it were of adequate dignity, at St Elmo.

As matters seem to be turning out, the Union's Integrated Marine policy project, less than a year since the approval of the Blue Paper piloted by Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg, seems to be pregnant with much weightier political and economic substance than the Sarkotic baby has been left with.

Where indeed has that project got to by now?

Two members of Borg's staff last week gave an excellent account of it to the international audience of students attending the International Ocean Institute - Malta Operational Centre's course. Together with them several Maltese stakeholders in sea-related activities also got a very valuable update.

In my opinion, the forthcoming event for which the Maltese participants, whoever they may be, should carefully prepare themselves is a meeting announced for January about Governance of the Mediterranean. Various issues from tuna fishing to oil exploration have again highlighted the fact that unresolved questions about sovereign rights in the sea can frustrate the best intentions inscribed in the Blue Paper.

These days are probably the last chance there is of opting for a common management system in the central Mediterranean as a model for what is plainly the only rational system of governance of marine space.

There are both negative and positive reasons why a shared common policy for the Mediterranean involving the littoral countries on both north and south sides rather than just an EU integrated marine policy is urgently needed, certainly from a Maltese point of view.

Negatively with the absurdity of large segments of our unique large inland-sea still being high seas in terms of International Law, (Mare Liberum in the old-fashioned sense of the term), primitive anarchy and ever more innovative organised criminal practices are prompting various governments into taking unilateral actions that are certainly not serving the ultimate common good.

Positively, apart from the offshore wind-energy to which our government is committed, wave generated energy is emerging as perhaps the most promising element in the alternative energy mixed package so vitally needed.

More generally, marine activities have been calculated, (or more probably underestimated) to contribute 14 per cent to Malta's GDP but this amount would certainly augment if there were a more efficiently regulated environment beyond our own territorial waters.

Do you think that Malta is making optimal use of opportunities, arising from the fact that its territory includes 200 times more sea than land, taking also into account future potential?

Malta can be said to have shown the world the need for a holistic approach to ocean space through its initiatives at the United Nations. The island has also been instrumental in the European Union's recently acquired awareness that its marine territories are more extensive and rich in possibilities for exploitation than its land, but that an overall strategy is required for it. Yet a co-ordinating mechanism is still lacking locally.

The students at the IOI-MOC course carried out extremely interesting exercises under the joint guidance of economist Gordon Cordina, energy engineer Robert Farrugia and Malta Environment and Planning Authority planner Carmen Mifsud in Marine Spatial Planning, with particular regard to its potential as an economic resource.

Their reports brought out very clearly the more advantageous siting of such activities as aquaculture, energy production, land reclamation (building of artificial islands and reefs), bunkering and shipping, research (Malta incidentally still remains the only Mediterranean country not to have a Marine research station), tourism. (They brought out ideas such as that of pesca turismo, likely to be more attractive than agrotourism, since the sort of artisanal fishing, both for tuna and for lampuki; and the use of vessels such as Luzzu and Kajjik, have already become rare elsewhere because of the takeover by industrial fishing).

An effective focal point for all marine activities in Malta would no doubt help the island to at last generate a holistic policy.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.