Last Thursday I attended the official inauguration of the upgraded Sant’Antnin recycling plant. The project cost €27 million, of which €16.3 million were paid by the EU and €10.7 million by the government and, consequently, the taxpayer.
As a result of this investment, we will not only be increasing the amount of waste separated but we will also be in a position to use waste as a resource, of which part can be recycled and exported, other parts can be converted to compost, and more significantly, some can be used to produce clean energy. Driven by greater environmental awareness and international obligations, this country has over the years been making significant investments to address our environmental deficit.
Opposition spokesman for the environment Leo Brincat recently took to task the director of the planning authority’s Environment Protection Directorate, Martin Seychell, for having said that “My job is to protect the environment but the environment does not exist in isolation. I always argue that if the economy is not doing well, the environment is the first casualty.” The opposition’s remark that “Cuba has a weak economy and a strong environment” shows the superficiality with which it treats the environment. A “strong environment” has nothing to do with postcard pictures of sandy beaches with cigar-rolling women sitting by 1950 fuel-guzzling Cadillacs.
Making the choices that count for our environment costs millions. Waste treatment plants, power station upgrades, the public transport reform with Euro V buses, the interconnector, the closure of Magħtab and Il-Qortin and their rehabilitation into parks, the sewage treatment plants which make our bathing waters among the cleanest in the Mediterranean, windfarms as a means of alternative energy, and schemes for industry and households to go for alternative energy and scrap old vehicles for new... all of these do not come for free. They come at a price running into hundreds of millions of euros paid in large part from taxes generated by our economy. The healthier an economy, the easier it becomes for a government, any government, to take the right, albeit costly, decisions in the interest of our environment. The weaker an economy, the more difficult it becomes to make such choices, with financial priorities often favouring education and social services.
The recent outcry over the Dwejra incident shows that for the public it is not only the macro dimension of the environment that matters but also the micro. To be fair, both are important and both have to be addressed but it would be inappropriate to think that one is more important than the other; it is a cheap shot to say that nothing is being done by the authorities on the environment because of what happened in Dwejra.
This is not an attempt to justify what took place at Dwejra. I expect the applicant producer and/or the contractor, who caused the incident, to be held accountable for the breach of the permit conditions imposed by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority and/or any breach of the environmental directives as a result of the fact that i) Applicant did not place the sand on an impermeable material; ii) applicant did not give Mepa-appointed monitors the required advance notification before placing the sand, and iii) applicant attempted to use mechanised vehicles to remove the sand. Any possible Mepa shortcomings moreover need to be addressed.
Now that the sand has been removed after a laborious three-week manual process, independent experts will be in a position to determine the extent of the damage, if any, suffered. Prof. Kevin Aquilina and Dr Simone Borg, two authorities in development and environmental law respectively, will be assessing whether the procedure adopted in processing applications to film in sensitive sites needs revisiting. I also await the Mepa auditor’s report on the matter.
It is a pity however that, contrary to what happened in countless similar instances where permits were granted for film companies to shoot in sensitive sites without consequence, the Dwejra incident has tarnished a whole industry and some have in the process attempted to tarnish Mepa and its directorate. Mepa could of course in future take the easy way out and simply refuse all applications for filming on our prime sites. But I do not believe anyone seriously believes that is the solution.
Having said that, we need to learn from this experience. We cannot react by being sensational and irrational. If there is scope for improvement let us find out what needs to be done to tighten a system which to date has nearly invariably worked without problems. But let us remember that our environment, the larger environment, does not live in isolation.
Dr de Marco is Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism, the Environment and Culture.