It is invariably that time of the year, when we give vent to our aspirations for the year-in-waiting. True to script, this a wish list cobbled together after an evaluation of the environmental status quo and by focusing only on the most pressing environmental priorities at a national level:
1. Current status: Three-membered Planning Commission approves the lion’s share of ODZ permits in a perfunctory fashion (i.e. each individual permit deliberated upon within just a few minutes), with very little scrutiny of proceedings by eNGOs or by the media.
Wishful thinking: A complete overhaul of this very important but largely overlooked decision-making board. Current legislation (the DPA) stipulates that these commissions should have a minimum of three members but does not prescribe the maximum. Why not contemplate having civil society and non-architects being represented on such commissions as well, to ensure that environmental considerations are given due weight?
2. Current status: Anomalously high fraction of ERA’s (Environment and Resources Authority) recommendations concerning ODZ applications are overturned by the PA’s (Planning Authority) Planning Commission on the back of the ODZ policies ushered in in 2014, such that ODZ development has become the norm rather than the exception.
Wishful thinking: A complete overhaul of the current ODZ legal framework (Rural Policy and Design Guidance) so as to plug the current loopholes which are leading to a piecemeal development of our ODZ areas through the approval of a morass of toolrooms, reservoirs, derelict farmhouse extensions, access roads within natural areas, etc.
3. Current status: Our cohort of 14 designated MPAs (Marine Protected Areas), soon to be extended to a total complement of 19, exist solely on paper to date.
Wishful thinking: A consensus of sorts among stakeholders is reached on the details of the management plans currently being formulated for the MPAs, with this consensus translating itself into political support for the MPA designation process, which would then ensure that the same management plans are not watered down and that funding to implement the plans is acceded to. This is especially relevant considering that Malta has made the inclusion of more than 50 per cent of its waters within MPA boundaries a central plank of its Our Oceans conference commitments.
4. Current status: Mature, indigenous roadside trees increasingly making way for wider roads to accommodate burgeoning volumes of vehicular traffic.
ODZ development has become the norm rather than the exception
Wishful thinking: Without harping once again on the redundancy of such an exercise, which simply plays musical chairs with our traffic bottlenecks, one must advocate the investment in a greater effort to professionally prune and transplant mature trees to bolster their chances of survival, and to avoid a repeat of the Lija mature oak tree chainsaw massacre. Transport Malta should also report on the locations and success of such transplantation and thus hold itself accountable.
5. Current status: Despite some chequered success in the past, afforestation efforts have somewhat lost momentum.
Wishful thinking: An indigenous tree individual is planted for each new birth in Malta (that would translate into roughly 4,000 trees being planted each year in a sustained fashion, rather than in fits and starts) and stewardship over parcels of government land is given to entities willing to invest effort and money in their afforestation. The government-St Aloysius College collaboration at Swatar is a case in point.
6. Current status: Applications for new (not relocated) fuel stations within ODZ areas abound (recently-permitted one at Burmarrad and pending one for a site along Qormi Road in Luqa are a case in point).
Wishful thinking: Overhaul of the current fuel stations policy, whose spirit has been abused in drawing the emphasis away from the necessary relocation of fuel stations from residential areas to industrial/disturbed areas (‘areas of containment’) to the development of spanking new fuel stations, complete with car wash, retail and office facilities, within ODZ areas.
7. Current status: Abandonment of traditional agricultural practices through the poor recruitment of young farmers (farmers have become an endangered species) and the reclamation of natural vegetation (especially garrigue) for bird trapping purposes.
Wishful thinking: The current registration system for agricultural land needs to be spruced up to weed out abuse, through which landowners can register supposedly agricultural land so as to qualify as part-time or full-time farmers and thus reap the benefits of ODZ development. The profession of genuine farmers needs to be shored up and awareness generated on the importance of fodder crops, which should not be considered as low-value agricultural land amenable for development. The reclamation of natural vegetation (most spectacular recent case at Binġemma) for agricultural or, worse still, for bird-trapping purposes.
8. Current status: Considerable volumes of plastic litter ending up in our sea.
Wishful thinking: Designation of the first local plastic-free beach pilot study and stiffening of fines related to marine littering infringements, including the discarding of fishing gear (e.g. nylon ropes) and the provision of port reception facilities for such discarded gear so that fishermen don’t dispose of it at sea, and financial compensation for fishermen who opt to recover their lampuki FADs at the end of the season rather than discarding them on the seabed.
And, probably, the tallest order of them all…placing ERA at an even par with the PA through the provision of the necessary resources (e.g. digital data infrastructure) and the decision-making powers (especially where areas of conservation importance, most notably Majjistral Park, are involved), as well as through an augmentation of the annual government subvention towards the ERA. Only then can we profess that Mepa’s 2016 demerger yielded two authorities with an equal clout and that the ‘environment’ is not the sidekick of big brother ‘planning.’
alan.deidun@gmail.com