The art of doing much with little

The fact that Malta is the smallest EU member state and one of the tiniest sovereign mem-bers of the international community does not exempt us from abiding by the EU and international obligations to which Malta is a party.

Indeed, tiny Malta has comparable legal obligations to those of EU heavyweights such as Germany, Italy and France. But unlike these countries, Malta does not have the comparable human and administrative resources at its disposal. Therefore, learning the art of doing much with little becomes very important.

Few EU policy areas are as heavily regulated as those related to environmental protection. When Malta joined the EU, it adopted around 200 pieces of legislation related to the environment. This legislation is now an integral part of the Maltese legal framework.

Add to that obligations under a multitude of international environmental agreements and a mix of national environmental issues that are unique to Malta, and you will have a very challenging situation where a comparatively small national administration must deliver what other, much larger countries, sometimes struggle to achieve.

And here, the availability of up-to-date, reliable, high quality scientific information on the state of the environment becomes paramount. Otherwise, how can the various national institutions that are involved in environmental protection prioritise their limited resources and address issues that really matter?

Moreover, how are we to fulfil Malta's numerous EU and international environmental monitoring and reporting obligations, if reliable and up-to-date information is simply not available? And, on top of that, how can Malta with its tiny resources sustain an environmental monitoring programme which could be quite costly in financial terms?

The Malta Environment and Planning Authority, which is the main national body responsible for environmental protection, has found an answer to these very challenging questions.

Earlier this year, Mepa secured over €4.9 million in EU and national funding for an ambitious initiative to overhaul the national environmental monitoring infrastructure and capacity.

The project is co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund, which provided 85 per cent of the project's funding and the Maltese government, which financed the rest under Operational Programme 1 - Investing in Competitiveness for a Better Quality of Life. Mepa's own funding contribution to this project is €180,000.

The project will radically transform and improve the national environmental monitoring capacity of five areas - air, water, radiation, noise, and soil. By mid-2013, the project will result in the procurement of equipment, information management systems, environmental baseline surveys, training of staff, and the enhancement of the national monitoring programmes in these five environmental themes.

As a result of the initiative, Malta will achieve compliance with most EU environmental monitoring requirements. Significantly, the environmental monitoring programmes will be based on state-of-the-art modern technology and will deliver results in the most cost-effective way possible.

This aspect of cost-effectiveness is extremely important in the context of the global economic slow-down and its effects on the Maltese economy.

The €4.9 million investment in monitoring infrastructure will not be an economic burden on the country. On the contrary, the cost and benefit analysis indicates a conservative projected net economic benefit of around €18.4 million over the 2010-to-2025 period, which is an almost a four-fold return on investment in economic terms.

The project is now well underway, with several large tenders about to be launched. The implementation of some project components has already begun. Last March, Mepa awarded a contract, which will result in Malta being compliant with all EU obligations concerning the monitoring of ambient noise.

Through this contract, a team of noise experts will measure ambient noise in strategic locations around Malta, prepare detailed noise maps, draw up a strategy for noise monitoring, technical specifications for equipment, and recommend actions to meet the requirements of EU and local legislation on ambient noise control.

In a few months' time, Mepa will oversee the delivery and commissioning of state-of-the-art environmental monitoring equipment as well as important information management hardware and software.

It will also oversee the design of the overall national monitoring strategy, and the delivery of baseline studies in the areas of air, water, soil and radiation. Terrestrial 3D spatial surveys and bathymetric surveys of coastal waters within one nautical mile of the coastline will be carried out.

The project is undoubtedly one of the most significant EU-funded environmental initiatives ever undertaken by Mepa, and is unique even on a European scale. But it is not the only EU-funded project at Mepa. Over the past six years, the authority has successfully undertaken over 85 inter-nationally funded projects and is constantly developing new proposals for funding.

Mr Golovkin is a manager of Mepa's international projects team.