Environmental NGO Flimkien Għal Ambjent Aħjar has launched a revamped brand identity to represent a younger, fresher outlook as part of a major revamp.
The NGO also announced that its coordinator Astrid Vella is handing over as she is moving overseas.
“This new branding will appeal to professional and creative young people, students, business leaders and families but does not shed the qualities and history that led us here.
“The colours chosen reflect the natural and built environment of the Maltese islands, with the outline of the Valletta skyline standing as an iconic standard-bearer for the beauty and heritage of our islands and a pertinent reminder of precisely what is at risk in the coming years,” committee member Tara Cassar told the FAA’s annual general meeting.
Astrid Vella said the organisation was making major changes in response to the challenges that Malta was facing on the environmental and heritage scene “with so many new planning policies being conceived and systematically manipulated to favour development on a scale that threatens to rob us not only of our heritage gems but also of our health”.
“Over the past year, FAA has seen the travesty of the Townsquare social impact assessment, the inclusion of Mrieħel in the tall-buildings zones after the policy was concluded, a wholesale onslaught on our urban conservation areas and a record number of applications granted in the so-called outside development zones,” she said.
She said the FAA had witnessed public officials, whose salaries were paid through public taxes, lie and dodge responsibility in an obscene and blatant manner.
It had also seen a flood of applications that were often approved even though they contravened policy or law. “We have gone from the frying pan into the volcano,” she said.
The FAA team was driven by the organisation’s aims to “promote better management of, use of and awareness of the environment and heritage of the Maltese islands and their impact on the quality of life of all residents – individuals, households, businesses and communities”, Ms Vella said.
Ms Vella will be relinquishing her role as coordinator, as she will shortly be moving overseas.