Will it pay to break up Mepa?

One of the more controversial proposals by the Labour Party is that the Malta Environment and Planning Authority should be broken up and reconstituted as a Planning and Sustainable Development Authority, with the environment hived off to form part of a new Environment and Resources Authority.

Joseph Muscat and some environmentalists in favour of the move argue that this will give the environment a greater voice in planning decisions.

Indeed, it is proposed that the new environment authority would have one vote on the planning board and would link it more closely with the environmental aspects that the Resources Authority will be responsible for.

Dr Muscat sought to further justify the move by saying that the restructuring of Mepa following the 2008 election had been a “spectacular failure”, a statement with which most objective observers would rightly take issue.

While not yet perfect – which planning authority anywhere is? – the new Mepa that took shape in 2009 has made great strides forward in finding a better balance between construction development and the protection of the environment. Political interference in planning decisions has been largely absent, the organisation is better led and boards and commissions are manned by high-quality individuals.

Is the break-up of Mepa, therefore, a fresh, big idea from Dr Muscat that will lead to more protection of the environment or is it a move aimed simply as a sop to the construction development lobby?

Government administration can be made to work in different permutations. There are close affinities between the four elements of environment, sustainable development, planning and resources. The argument is about how to mix and match them. The key test should be: how well do particular combinations work in practice? This should be the benchmark applied before structural changes are made to ministries or authorities.

The arguments for or against the break-up of Mepa appear finely balanced.

The Church Environment Commission and some environmentalists argue that keeping the environment and planning apart by having a regulator that is independent of the planning authority will make the authority stronger in preventing more erosion of the natural environment.

The Today Public Policy Institute, on the other hand, argues for keeping environment and planning together: “The essence of good spatial planning in Malta hinges around land use. While there is inevitably a creative tension between planning and environmental protection, to separate the two functions would undermine the vital need for close coordination and integration between them. In the Maltese context they constitute two sides of the same coin to an extent not found in larger countries.”

In a recent article, titled Better Integration Is The Answer, the former director general of Mepa agreed, emphasising that “an effective spatial planning process requires a holistic and integrated approach across government policy-making”. He added that responsibility for transport infrastructure should also lie with the authority.

There is not unreasonable concern that the Labour Party’s proposals to separate the two functions will open the way to looser control over planning, thus benefiting the development lobby.

Such is the importance of dealing with the country’s land use problems, however, that a decision on what is best organisationally should turn on one fundamental question: where should the Government best deploy the environmental authority to act as the most effective check on the planning authority? Labour’s proposals seem unlikely to meet that essential criterion.