Even though the degradation of the environment has become one of the major concerns today and even though Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has openly admitted his government has not been sensitive enough to its protection as it should have been, this most serious and glaring shortcoming has not had any influencing force in the outcome of the latest round of elections.
This is not surprising at all when considering that the overriding message the government has been consistently putting across is that what counts most is economic success. With Dr Muscat turning the election into a personal contest with the Opposition leader, instead of one in which the electorate chooses the best candidates for the European Parliament and local councils, the outcome was no surprise.
It will take time before greater weight is given to the environment and, indeed, to good governance, in the assessment of an administration’s performance in an election. Yet, if, at last, the Prime Minister is finally waking up to the realisation that more and more people are getting worried about the ever-worsening state of the environment, there may still be a glimmer of hope that things will eventually change for the better.
Dr Muscat’s admission that his government had not been as sensitive as it should have been to the people’s concerns over the environment was an understatement. The degradation of the environment has not come about overnight. Yet, successive governments have paid greater attention to speeding up the rhythm of economic growth than to working out plans to ensure that such growth is concurrently backed up by the expansion of the country’s infrastructure.
Ensuring an adequate power and water supply is vitally important but there are other important services and facilities that would need to keep up with economic and population growth. Overdevelopment and the traffic congestion problem are lowering the people’s quality of life, which is, after all, what ought to count most.
Scarce virgin land has been taken up for development and attempts are still regularly being made to encroach upon outside development zones. Much of the country’s character has already been lost to development and projects on the drawing board are bound to alter much-loved skylines.
Village cores have, or are in the process of being, threatened by new development as houses are pulled down to be replaced by nondescript blocks of flats. To add to all this, many places are becoming shabbier.
The call is not for a stop to development but for carefully worked-out plans to stem uncontrolled construction and to protect what is left of the country’s urban and rural character. The effort being made to rehabilitate the valleys is one example of how the degradation can be reversed.
An endemic problem is that, once done, a project is often left to its own devices. Regular maintenance is often unheard of, as shown by the bad state of many public places. Other pressing problems are those over excessive noise, air pollution, water quality and waste disposal.
Progress has been made in some areas but the overall picture is one that cries out for new thinking and for fresh, collective efforts to stop the degradation and, instead, concentrate on how to enhance and beautify the country to ensure a better quality of life.
This is a Times of Malta print editorial