A group of environmental NGOs have supported the conclusions of Environment Minister Mario de Marco that the Rio+20 summit lacked ambition.

Lack of political will on the part of governments

“The Rio+20 declaration reaffirms the ‘Rio Principles’ first agreed at the 1992 Earth Summit, but does not go any further.

“It ignores the needs of developing countries and highlights the lack of political will on the part of governments. Politicians around the world are understandably concerned about the economic crisis but it will only be remedied when politicians stop treating it separately from social and environmental problems,” the NGOs said.

The group includes Friends of the Earth (Malta), Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar, NatureTrust (Malta), the Malta Organic Agriculture Movement and the Ramblers’ Association of Malta.

However, they said that comments such as Dr de Marco’s were often made by politicians in regard to international summits but, then, the same politicians accepted a far slower pace of environmental progress in Malta.

They referred to various studies issued over the years, saying many of these had produced voluminous and detailed proposals that had been announced with much fanfare but resulted in very little tangible action.

The environment NGOs said they were also wary of comments made recently by Labour leader Joseph Muscat.

Ominous declarations to “cut bureaucracy”, they said, came at a time when applications filed at the Malta Environment and Planning Authority were often processed with inadequate studies due to pressure from developers to speed up time frames.

“Joseph Muscat then publicly declared his mistrust of Mepa’s studies on land reclamation, declaring that the issue should be left to developers, the very stakeholders who have an interest in promoting the ‘concretisation of Malta’,” the NGOs said.