Widening roads to reduce traffic would not work and aggressive solutions to target transport congestion were needed, Environment Commissioner Alan Saliba said.
“Short-term solutions – much like widening or creating a bypass for arteries that have become blocked by years of an unhealthy diet without changing drastically the eating habits and the lifestyle of a patient – will not work,” he said.
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Mr Saliba conceded that widening certain arterial roads might reduce commuting times and consequently reduce pollution. However, he warned that past experience showed that any interventions in such a small island were easily short-lived as traffic tended to grind to a halt again within a few years.
Mr Saliba was reacting to a report by the Environment and Resources Authority on the state of the environment presented in Parliament last week.
The latest report comes a full decade after the last State of the Environment Report in 2008. The reporting period of this State of the Environment report is 2009 to 2015.
In his opinion, the Environment Commissioner insisted that the Environment and Resources Authority should take a more active role and assume overall responsibility for collection and interpretation of information about the environment.
Mr Saliba also argued that the Strategic Plan for Environment and Development (SPED) should be a binding document for all government entities and guide all major projects.
“We cannot have a situation where the valuable principles enshrined in the strategic plan are completely bypassed,” Mr Saliba said.
The Environment Commissioner within the office of the Ombudsman noted that several decisions and policies introduced in the past years had left a significant impact on land use.
“With the introduction of penthouses, the floor-area-ratio policy, we have witnessed radical changes to the housing stock, an increase in the generation of construction waste, pressure on the infrastructure and an unhealthy divide in the housing spectrum, limiting the choice and availability of residential space to the public,” he said.
He said the issue of affordable housing could only be addressed through fiscal and economic incentives. Further development outside development zones should not be contemplated, the Commissioner insisted.
On waste, the Environment Commissioner said people’s willingness to cut down on consumption could not be relied on.
“We must accept reality,” he said.
“We do however, need to consider the impact of extreme solutions such as incineration on people’s behaviour in the future.”