Lack of political will to address the free extraction of groundwater or provide adequate solutions for water harvesting has made Malta one of the most water-stressed countries in the world, a think-tank said.

Water scarcity is an urgent and growing problem that the country must confront, but, although politicians have been aware of the issue for at least 20 years, no significant action has been taken “despite its vital importance to our very survival as a country”, according to a report by the Today Public Policy Institute.

The independent think-tank said the politicisation of water was the biggest obstacle to the production of a national plan because no administration would take the obvious risks of forging ahead with the necessary tough decisions.

“The water issue remains a political football… politicians must live up to their responsibilities,” the report said.

The main aim of the report, entitled ‘Why Malta’s national water plan requires an analytical policy framework’, is to point out that a national water plan cannot deliver the required results without proper studies and an analysis of current policies.

“There are huge information gaps on water capacity and its use. Rigorous data collection is a necessary prerequisite to any plan,” World Bank expert Lee Roberts, the lead author of the report, said.

Mr Roberts argued the country needed to have an independent policy institute that could provide well-verified information, facts and analysis.

“It’s very unusual for ministries to do their own analysis, as happens in Malta. Every critical issue then takes on a political perspective. It’s about objectivity versus politicisation,” Mr Roberts said.

The government has been claiming credit for reducing water tariffs by five per cent, yet it is not even clear how the rates are determined. The report is critical of the lack of any studies and lack of transparency surrounding the true cost of water.

Hydrologist Marco Cremona argued the country was spending millions of euros on projects without a plan. As co-author of the report, he pointed out that lack of information and solid analysis on water consumption had led to “a huge vacuum of water rights in the country”.

He referred to the issue of boreholes, an obvious problem that successive governments failed to address. The free extraction of groundwater by industry, agriculture and private residences cannot be accurately quantified because the process of metering boreholes is still not completed, five years after the original 2010 deadline.

“We do not know how much water the country consumes. The procrastination in the metering of boreholes is intentional,” he said, returning to the issue of political responsibility.

Malta has two days’ supply of water in an emergency

Up to last year, only about half the agricultural boreholes had been metered, yet the sector is by far the largest consumer of free groundwater.

The agricultural sector extracts more than double what the Water Services Corporation uses to serve the entire nation but contributes only two per cent to GDP.

The report insists on the need for an analysis of the agricultural sector’s water consumption before any national plan could be hammered out.

“It takes 50 litres of water to grow a tomato – water that is free and not reflected in the price. At the same time, we are intensifying agricultural practices even in the dry months, which is unsustainable. Are we pushing the whole sector into a corner?” Mr Cremona asked.

Royal Dutch Shell geologist Gordon Knox said agriculture in countries, such as Spain, had adopted an approach focused on planting crops that required less water but had a higher value.

Despite an EU directive obliging Malta to achieve good water status by the end of this year, the country was lagging behind and had requested a 12-year extension. At the same time, there is no policy change that can guarantee the country can achieve that even within the extended timeframe.

Meanwhile, Malta’s ground­water is polluted with high concentrations of nitrates and increasing salinity, leading to an increased reliance on reverse osmosis plants.

The island’s increasing reliance on desalination plants and imported water are making the country vulnerable, especially as climate change is leading to increased water scarcity, the report warns.

Water consumption in Malta

• Every year, the country extracts more groundwater than it can replenish, leading to seawater intrusion, resulting in salinisation.

Nitrate contamination in Malta’s groundwater is already higher than the specified EU limit.

• Estimates show about 56 per cent of the country’s potable water comes from aquifers and about 34 per cent from desalination.

Farmers extract more than double what the Water Services Corporation uses to serve the entire nation.

• The amount of free groundwater used by industry, bottling companies and private residences is unknown.

• Malta relies heavily on the importation of agricultural produce and other goods that require significant water use for their production: the country imports the equivalent of 900 million cubic metres of ‘virtual water’.

• The amount of ‘virtual water’ imported is more than 10 times the total amount of water consumed from domestic sources.

A lesson from the Maldives

A fire at a reverse osmosis plant in the Maldives last year cut off drinking water to the capital of the Indian Ocean country, leading to people attacking shops for bottled water.

Like Malta, the capital’s groundwater is heavily contaminated so the crisis led to surrounding nations sending planes with bottled water to address the emergency.

It drew global media attention and prompted the public to ask how prepared the government was for an emergency water cut-off. Questions also focused on the wisdom of relying on desalination plants for potable water.

If Malta were faced with a similar situation and its desalination plants were cut off, the country has only two days’ water supply.

An oil spill hitting the country’s important infrastructure is a very real threat, as Malta is on the main transportation routes in the Mediterranean, accounting for about 20 per cent of the world’s oil tanker traffic.

It took only a fire to cause a crisis in the Maldives. The government found out too late it had not done enough to address its water problem.

Does Malta need to wait for an emergency to ensure the country does not experience the same crisis?