No action plan to combat air pollution can succeed unless it is holistic, integrated and actively monitored in its implementation. While I am committed to ensure that the new Environment and Resources Authority will give air quality issues the top priority it deserves, this must also come accompanied by the necessary capacity building.

We must ensure that the monitoring and the policy segments are effectively run, particularly given the strong focus at EU level on the monitoring and compliance of ambient air.

Even knowledge of the instruments used is pivotal because, as an expert pointed out, air quality monitoring is not a ‘plug and play’ business. This is mostly due to the fact that different instruments have different sensitivities while not all dust-measuring instruments are ideal for Malta because dust is an all encompassing term and, therefore, one would be required to be knowledgeable about the Maltese air pollution climate before selecting appropriate dust-monitoring instruments.

The closure of the Marsa power plant – a long overdue milestone achievement – will have important ramifications such as the need to redefine the zones and agglomerations in Malta, the basic geographical units with respect to air quality management.

These, together with other moves towards cleaner air technology, must also be factored in together with an EU air quality set of policy changes that are happening at a very fast pace.

In our case, most of these are related to the need for constant improvements in monitoring, quality assurance and reporting methods.

Although I will be assuming full political responsibility for the environmental arm of Mepa once the demerger is seen through and implemented, we have been taking the necessary measures to ensure that once the demerger takes place no time will be lost in putting our house in order.

First and foremost, we need to be well geared to have the capacity to be proactive in this area, an area that, in itself, calls for professional top-notch know-how as well as the high technical savvy that work in air quality management normally calls for.

But our responsibilities should and do extend way beyond the demerger itself.

The deleterious impact of air pollution is not confined to human health

Months ago I commissioned a highly-interesting in house report by MartinScicluna that, as I had mentioned then, can only be fully implemented once the demerger takes place.

What struck me most about is that it entails a set of practical recommendations that are doable, can be implemented at minimal or, in some cases, no cost at all, so long as an integrated approach and inter-ministerial hands-on way forward is agreed upon.

Its recommendations might not be cast in stone but it would be a grave mistake were we to ignore them when push comes to shove, while giving them strongly-merited consideration.

Not that any wake-up calls were needed and it is no ground-breaking news that WHO reports on the economic cost of the health impact of air pollution in Europe are always far more hard-hitting than those conducted by the EU itself as well as by the EEA – the European Environment Agency.

However, it would be almost criminal to ignore the new study the WHO published, based on an analysis of the most recent WHO, EU and OECD research on the cost of ambient and household air pollution to cover all 53 member states of the WHO European region.

It is no joke to speak of an estimated seven million premature deaths globally each year, representing one in eight of the total deaths worldwide. There should be little comfort in the fact that the estimated mortality linked to premature deaths might have dipped between 2005 and 2010 in the WHO European region.

The most telling lesson is that ambient and household air pollution imposes an economic cost to society of several trillion dollars per year globally.

A relatively successful if imperfect regulatory regime on air quality in Europe has resulted in substantial progress, especially in EU member states, in terms of health impacts and costs. However, in view of the persistence of the problem of air pollution in Europe, filling existing knowledge gaps and correcting distortions in taxes and subsidies remains highly desirable.

The deleterious impact of air pollution is not confined to human health.

There are many other impacts that are worthy of consideration: those on the built environment, on industrial activity, on animal and plant health and on larger ecological systems.

This explains why, in this perspective, addressing air pollution can have significant co-benefits for other policy objectives and air quality may simultaneously benefit from interventions that pursue other priorities, including climate change.

What is most alarming is that this study shows that the health impacts of air pollution are far larger than previously assumed, both within EU member states as well as beyond.

Consequently, as the study concluded, this physical toll also imposes a greater economic cost than previously assumed and, thus, the net economic benefit to be gained by reducing this cost is far greater than previously assumed too.

Nothing short of ‘a whole of government’ policy approach, as recommended and underlined by WHO’s Health 2020 policy, should suffice. Decisions-makers across the whole of government must be engaged in the whole process.

Leo Brincat is Minister for Sustainable Development, the Environment and Climate Change.

Times Talk will be discussing air pollution this evening at 6.45pm on TVM.

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