Planning and environment should be separate - AD

The Mepa reform document presented yesterday was a positive effort which could generate a fruitful discussion, AD's spokesman on sustainable development Carmel Cacopardo said.

He said AD felt that a number of positive proposals were being put forward while others should possibly be reconsidered as a result of the public discussion which was now to start.

MEPA, Mr Cacopardo pointed out, was never a policy maker - it drafted policies for the consideration of government, but the proposal for its detachment from policy formulation/drafting was positive.

Likewise the shedding of responsibilities which could now be shouldered by other bodies set up since 1992 was also positive.

AD applauded the insistence of the reform document on the need to channel negotiations on proposals for development at directorate level and away from the Development Control Commission.

However, it considered that limiting the DCC to a chairman and two members could be too small especially in respect of its dealing with urban conservation areas, outside development zones and major projects. The latter DCC would require expertise in more areas that could reasonably be covered by three persons.

The proposal to appoint a fulltime DCC had its merits in addressing conflicts of interest of current parttime DCC members who were practising their profession.

The basic issue of the manner of selecting of DCC/board members was, however, not addressed by the reform document.

AD had proposed in the run-up to the 2008 election that while the government should retain the power to appoint MEPA board and DCC members these should be subject to a public hearing by a Parliamentary committee to ascertain their suitability, a procedure similar to that adopted by the US senate to vet high level appointments by the US President.

As for the proposal to appoint environment NGO representatives on the MEPA board, Mr Cacopardo said that while pointing out that it did not doubt the good intentions behind such a proposal considered that there were better ways of involving environmentalists in the decision taking structures of MEPA.

AD noted that in 2006 the chairman of an environmental NGO was appointed to the MEPA board, but he resigned not much later.

Even officials of such organisations could have conflicts of interests between their duties as representatives of NGOs on the one hand and as members of decision taking structures on the other hand.

AD noted that the government was insisting on retaining the environment and land use planning as part of the same authority, something about which it had expressed reservations in the past.

Its reservations were based on the limited resources which in the past placed MEPA's Environment Directorate in severe weakness in the MEPA structures, in particular in a position subservient to Land Use Planning.