Green policy must have all-round support

Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Mario de Marco is to be congratulated on the quality, scope and presentation of the national environment policy, which he recently presented following wide public consultation. The document is well written and easy to read. It sets out an extremely ambitious and comprehensive assessment of the state of the environment and the cultural heritage and what needs to be done to protect them.

The document is divided into six major sections: greening the economy; safeguarding environmental health; using resources efficiently and sustainably; a pleasant place: improving the environment; greening Gozo and long-term sustainability issues. Within each section, it lays down policy measures to be adopted and broad assessment criteria, albeit very crude, for measuring progress and success in implementing them.

Most importantly, however, it talks about the introduction of “joined-up government” to ensure the various government ministries and departments work together in tackling the environmental challenges facing Malta in a coordinated and concerted manner. This is long overdue. Failure to coordinate action in the past has lain at the heart of much of the previous inability to bring the environmental deficit under control.

If this policy document achieves a properly coordinated government approach on this issue, Malta will indeed have taken a major step forward. Given that the environment, alongside the economy and social development, is the third leg of the crucial proposals for Malta’s long-term sustainable development, it is important to see the national environment policy in this wider context.

In both cases – the belated implementation of a comprehensive environmental policy and a national sustainability plan – the need for efficient and effective joined-up machinery of government will be paramount. Without this, both this policy and the Bill for Sustainable Development, when enacted, will fail, as have so many earlier government initiatives in this area.

It remains to be seen whether the formation of a Cabinet Committee and an Advisory Council for the Environment (the latter modelled, it is assumed, on the Committee of Guarantee in the cultural heritage field, which has not been very effective) will lead to the positive implementation outcomes that this policy document promises. It is now down to political will.

There are two other vital aspects that arise from the publication of the national environment policy.

The first concerns enforcement. The minister announced that “a well-resourced enforcement directorate” will be set up by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority by the end of this year. This seems tardy and short-sighted. Enforcement is the Achilles heel of almost all government policy and legislation. Given that the initiatives set out so well in the national environment policy are estimated to cost €2.1 billion, it seems like spoiling the ship for a halfpennyworth of tar to delay and risk falling down on this issue.

The second is its timing. It is a pity that a government that had made getting the environmental deficit under control its top priority when it was elected in 2008 has taken four years to draw up this action plan. It would, therefore, be a huge setback for Malta if, because of the vagaries and polarisation of national politics, the thrust and the need for implementation of the policies set out in this document were not followed through by whichever Administration is in power in the years ahead.

It is to be hoped that the Leader of the Opposition will embrace the proposals made and support their implementation. He would be doing Malta a disservice if he did not.