In the chaos of the counting hall on election Sunday I met one of the champions of the Save Kalkara Valley campaign. His disappointment at the Labour Party loss was apparent in that the MLP promise to save the valley lay shattered, like smashed green beer bottles in the street after a Nationalist victory celebration.
The fork-tongued Labour policy dangled the valley on the end of a stick as it openly prepared to roll out the red carpet for other massive developments, most notably the Gozo yacht marina. Thankfully, that particular brand of madness has been safely locked up. At least for another term.
While our heads were filled with election turmoil, the development threat to the Maltese countryside did not let up. An applicant for outline development permission on the clay slopes near Verdala Hotel wants to cut down trees to survey the land to obtain a to planning permit.
Happy Earth Day
Earth Day, marked on April 22, is 33 years old. It started in the United States in 1962 when a Senator, troubled that the state of the environment was "simply a non-issue in the politics of the country", decided to do something.
All across the country, evidence of environmental degradation was appearing and everyone noticed except the political establishment. The people were concerned, but the politicians were not.
The idea that became Earth Day took off in the summer of 1969. At the time, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations had spread to college campuses all across the nation.
Suddenly, the idea occurred to Senator Gaylord Nelson - why not organise a huge grassroots protest over what was happening to the environment?
"I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda.
"Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organise 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organised itself," the senator said.
As many Americans still celebrate Earth Day the battle in Iraq rages over who controls the earth's remaining, energy reserves and the anti-war protests are with us again.
The Ecologist this month lists 30 steps to an oil-free world including a boycott of oil companies like Esso "that are obstructing the transition to renewable energy systems".
Directions
If you are driving along and come to a sign that says the by-pass is closed you search for and find another route. No matter how snakelike and crater-ridden, it will get you there in the end.
In the Mediterranean we have ways of getting there. It even becomes a game to outwit the system. People slink out under cover of darkness to indulge in a little illegal dumping. In broad daylight the ice- cream wrapper departs from hand as if it had a mind of its own. "Sinjura waqatlek karta."
Small island state Malta's six-month turn at the helm will come as the presidency rotates among members. We had better get working on our own programme and see what a small island state might offer the European Union in terms of useful ideas on developing sustainably.
This might well include looking at how the European Commission is to see that the accession countries implement environmental legislation.
Several parallels exist with our immediate neighbours and it would be worth examining their own history of accession to Europe. France, Italy, and Spain have the highest incidences of incorrect application of directives.
They demonstrated the worst record accounting for one third of the 1,525 cases opened by the Environment Commission against member states in 1998.
Best performers are the Nordic countries and Austria. Even before accession Sweden had already implemented much of the EU's legislation. On acquiring membership more legislation on nature protection and rules on nuclear safety were added.
Sweden's national rules on car emissions and chemicals, even stricter than EU rules came up for review in 1998. In most cases the review process led to the adoption of tighter environmental standards for the rest of the Union.
Concerns about acid rain from sulphur emissions which had destroyed Swedish lakes and forests led to a Union-wide cut back on sulphur content of petrol.
The Swedish government introduced a five-year programme providing one billion Swedish Kroner for investments in the building and construction sector which improved the quality of the environment with new technology applied to power and waste systems.
Despite a good performance, Sweden was not without its shortfalls and found itself on the receiving end of a number of reasoned opinions (final warnings) over complete or partial failure to enact national transposal measures by the required deadline. These involved directives on ambient air quality, waste management, ozone and incineration of hazardous waste.
During its six-month EU Presidency in 1999 Finland achieved its goal of integrating environmental aspects into the Union's sectoral policies. The Transport, Agriculture and Energy Councils adopted integration strategies in a solid move toward sustainable development.
Finland's Environment Council reached common positions on directives for end-of-life vehicles, assessment of the effects of plans on the environment and limit values for benzene. A recommendation was made for environmental inspections in member states and the decision was made to set up a community framework for co-operation on marine pollution accidents.
Down south, Italian environmental policy encountered difficulties due to the lack of a national strategy, problems with identifying responsible administrative bodies and too little co-ordination between ministries.
Another obstacle has been political instability. Without stable political support and commitment environmental reform and monitoring is difficult.
The increased monitoring power of Italy's Environment Ministry and the effect of European legislation improved the situation dramatically, yet problems remained due to personnel shortages within the Ministry.
Italy received a reasoned opinion over the transposition of the directives on disposal of PCBs and PCTs, two particularly dangerous products.
Another warning was issued over the lack of a systematic organic action programme for the whole country. The Court ruled against Italy over dangerous substances discharged into the aquatic environment, saying the country had failed to fulfil obligations on 99 listed substances.
The French have a high level of incorrect application of directives, nearly as high as notorious Spain. The directive on emissions of gaseous and particulate pollutants in the air proved to be problematic for the French but has since been implemented.
A 1992 decree on packaging waste which assigned responsibility for collecting and sorting of household waste to municipalities, rather than to industry, aims at reducing the quantity of waste produced and promoting recycling. The French environment ministry looked for methods of collection and treatment that would reduce the waste bill for taxpayers.
Responsibility for environmental policy in Spain has been strongly decentralised, since it is being shared between central government and 17 autonomous regions.
The regions carry out inspections and establish their own laws and regulations within the national framework, but awareness and enforcement varies from one region to the next. Financial support from the EU was requested to help replant forests destroyed by fire during the hot months.
Spain was reprimanded by the Commission over failure to transpose measures on air quality assessment and management by the prescribed deadline.
The Commission also warned Spain for failing to adopt a sufficient planning system for waste management and started proceedings over failure to set up programmes to reduce heavy metal content in batteries and accumulators.
Before the Water Framework Directive came into being Spain received notifications on seven of the 22 water directives and Court action was taken in a number of water-related areas including bathing water and nitrates in the drinking water supply. Spain also failed to enact legislation to satisfy the directive on freedom of access to information
They have a word for it
The Greeks, despite the famous landfill penalty, are better than average performers for the Mediterranean region. Early difficulties with environmental law due to division of powers and responsibilities between different ministries has been overcome.
The country has one of the most satisfactory records for quality of transposing environmental law because of its strong legislative framework, leaving little room for error with many directives literally copied into the Greek system.
The government created a programme to get half of all old cars off the road by offering people cash back on newer models. Greece is the only country in Europe which has implemented the control and sampling of bathing water exactly as laid out in the directive.
Yet legal action was still taken against Greece for not defining targets for pollution reduction programmes.
Most member states have slipped up over implementation of the directive on major accident hazards known as the Seveso directive. An amendment to this directive has put greater emphasis on the need to identify areas where hazardous activities are being undertaken and the importance of informing the public of potential dangers. Consistently dissatisfied with the wrong interpretation by member states of the environment impact assessment (EIA) directive, the Commission amended it to state that all projects must be examined by a competent body to determine whether an assessment should be made.
An EIA is now also needed prior to the adoption of plans and programmes which set the framework for developing consent decisions on town and country planning.
Environment Commissioner Margaret Wallstrom's "name and shame" initiative was aimed at putting enforcement high on the agenda. Whether or not the member states themselves enforce environmental protection legislation is perhaps the most important aspect of compliance.
Like life, Europe is what you make it. No one can do it for us. We are now moving into a territory with clear roadsigns to a better quality of life and the environment in which we all live. Now the real work begins. No one said it would be easy.