What’s all this fuss about Dwejra? Judging by the watery eyes all round, the gnashing of teeth and the talk of heart attacks, you would think someone had walled up the Azure window or bombed Fungus Rock. Instead what you get is a few metres of sand deposited on some rock.

Lest I be misunderstood (well ...), I don’t think the sand was a particularly good idea. I’m also glad the Malta Environment and Planning Authority seems to be taking this seriously, and that they’ve promised the place will be returned to its former self in no time. That said, there are at least four reasons why this whole ‘saga’ rings hollow.

First, Dwejra is, in any case, a dump, truth be told. Last week someone described it as one of the seven wonders of the world. Maybe, if one ignores the quarries, the mounds of rubble, the boathouses, the hideous chapel, the car park, the various kiosks and contraptions, the swarms of divers clambering all over the place, the tourist coaches... I honestly doubt a heap of sand makes much of a difference.

The solemn talk of ‘ecological disaster’, ‘unique species’, and ‘heritage of humankind’ doesn’t help. It makes it sound like a white tiger was there having tea with a panda when the bulldozers moved in and sent the whole thing crashing onto a dodo’s nest.

Second, sanctimonious attitudes – be they on health, sex, or ‘the environment’ – get on my nerves. I wonder how many of those crying river over the micro-organisms and endemic plants at Dwejra have bought seafront properties or obliterated legions of micro-organisms under barbeque charcoal.

The people who can least afford to feel holy about this are politicians. It’s all very well for Leo Brincat to swan around looking all shocked and traumatised, but I’ve yet to hear him say anything consequential about the army camped permanently at Armier, for example. In that case, the welfare of electoral ecosystems and voting fauna trumps that of endemic plants hands down.

Third, this seems to be a case of what we might call ‘niche environmentalism’. I mean, what on earth does Dwejra have that the rest of the Maltese coastline doesn’t? There are places in Delimara, say, that are a million times more interesting in terms of the nature living there. And yet they languish at the mercy of the various local beach impresarios or buried under fish farm sludge.

I’m saying it’s simply counterproductive to deify a few spots (in this case, an unlikely god to boot) and ignore the rest of the island. It lends itself to accusations of għaġeb (making a fuss). To be honest, that’s the first word that came to mind when I read the news about Dwejra.

There’s a fourth thing. The Inquisition has been keen to point fingers at Mepa for ‘selling out’, that is, devaluing Dwejra for the sake of a fistful of film industry dollars. Maybe, but that bears an uncanny resemblance to what the Inquisition itself is doing, that is, valuing Dwejra because it is a ‘Natura 2000’ site and because it has ‘already attracted EU funding’. Just when I thought this was about micro-organisms.

Rave over, it may be worth trying to get to the bottom of this in a more neutral and balanced way. What is happening at Dwejra? Why are people making such a fuss?

I sort of understand what’s going on. Dolphins provide a good analogy. Dolphins are very charming animals but that hardly explains why some people treat them as some sort of seafaring sacred cow. The usual explanation is that ‘they’re intelligent’, but I doubt empathy and concern for welfare should be based on that criterion. That would justify cruelty to chickens, or even to stupid people – which wouldn’t do.

Rather, the real reason dolphins are so venerated is that they’ve become totemic animals. Their plight has come to represent the fortunes of the sea specifically, and of the planet’s ecology generally. That’s why The Cove (2009) is such a moving and shocking film.

One reads, in the broken and bloody bodies of the dying dolphins, the flawed relation between humans and nature. The reference to the Crucifixion and the significance of Jesus’ battered body is hard to avoid.

That’s exactly the matter at Dwejra. That patch of land, sanctified beyond reason and bare ecological factuality, has become the repository of ‘man’s sins’, so to say. In this case that means years of frustration for environmentalists who deal daily with pig-headed neglect and an apparently comatose Mepa. Their fuss over Dwejra has little to do with fossils and micro-habitats. Rather, it has to do with the question: Is no corner of Malta sacred anymore?

But that only explains part of the story. For it is not just environmentalist NGOs clamouring here. The public at large and politicians have joined in rather too happily. Here again, the analogy with dolphins and the Crucifixion proves useful.

The happenings at Dwejra serve, for one, as a fantastic pretext for a spot of Mepa-bashing. The standard ‘weak with the strong/strong with the weak’ (of course, everyone is weak when it suits them) argument seems to be borne out wonderfully by the key elements of the story – the officials caught napping, the ridiculously small bank guarantee, and so on. The whole thing resembles a morality play, with no prizes for guessing who the powers of evil are.

It doesn’t stop with Mepa. The heap of sand can also be read, according to one’s dispositions, as a symbol of the bumbling state, of a government that cannot get anything right. This is probably the spirit in which the PL called for an independent inquiry.

It’s also why Mario de Marco showed up on Wednesday and ordered an equally-independent Mepa review. It turns out the filmmakers were prophetic when they called the film The Game of Thrones.

Seen in this light, I begin to enjoy the situation. It shows what happens when people turn a notion like Natura 2000 on its head and use it to subvert the very structures – Mepa, the state, and so on – that sustain it. It takes a sacred site to do that, so maybe all is not lost for Dwejra.

mafalzon@hotmail.com