Environmental disorientation

Political environmental awareness reached its climax in 2004 before accession to the European Union. Membership achieved, the environment started a political nosedive. ‘Merged’ with the Planning Authority, it was hijacked, destabilised and emarginated. Look at how environmental matters are being handled today by Mepa, politically referred to only just for convenience sake with no conviction at all. This led nine environment NGOs to show their disapproval of the lack of professional management of the environment.

The year 2013 can be regarded as the year when environment disorientation reached its peak and environment conservation hit rock bottom. To the extent that Mepa, ­ the competent authority for the EU environment acquis, is not within the control and not in the portfolio of the Minister for the Environment but managed and run by the Office of the Prime Minister, through a parliamentary secretary.

Mepa, which never really showed any zeal or understanding of environmental responsibilities except for producing nicely-coloured publications and policies, which nobody takes any notice of, not even Mepa itself, had a field day.

Stable doors were flung wide open, allowing horses not only to gallop out but to stampede over all environmental and social considerations. Reason for this sad and sorry state of affairs is that the environment and planning directorates are going to be separated.

All environmental matters are in deep freeze, till the day when the surgical operation of dismembering Mepa arrives. In the meantime, development permits are being dished out with little, if any, environmental or social concern.

When the environment is given the kiss of life, then it won’t be Mepa’s problem any more to see how the stables’ doors can be closed to keep the horse inside.

Why was Mepa not included in the environment portfolio until the operation takes place and then the planning directorate passed to the appropriate minister? Because environment is not a priority. It never was.

Environment destruction is turning our lives upside-down

One of the expensive muddles resulting from EU obligations is the Water Framework Directive; not an easy directive by all means, the more so since Malta is an island.

This directive covers both surface and underground water: a matter of life and death for all life in the country. The past year saw this resource in such a pitiful state! It had never been in such a state since the advent of man on these islands.

Projects inherited from previous years included an educational programme piloted by one minister and sponsored by a local bank to catch every drop of water while another minister was happily boasting and spending €57 million or more, mostly coming from the EU, excavating underground tunnels so that every drop of rainwater caught is swept into the sea after bulldozing biodiversity in valleys.

Yet another minister was responsible for EU funds to see to the purification of drainage water, not to harvest such resource but to dispose of it into the sea with a certain pride and satisfaction of being unique in the EU.

Still another minister was trying to find his way through an inherited tangled cobweb, attempting to plug the holes through which water tankers plied the roads, selling water extracted for free from the aquifers. Another financed the desalination of seawater (containing dumped purified drainage water) by energy-consuming desalination plants.

I cannot not mention the water park, the dancing fountains and the expanses of turf being laid, taking gallons and gallons of water sprinkled everyday with the approval of the ministry for landscaping. And a postponed and postponed national water policy, risking EU infraction.

Great political management of the environment! Shall we soon be singing ring a ring o’roses? God forbid.

The monument for environmental and social destruction during 2013 was, without doubt, the Nadur cemetery. It was built on a priceless ecological water catchment area, destroying works of the Knights to harvest rainwater and putting the ecosystem and the life of a farming community in danger by depriving them of water and by flooding other farmers’ fields because of the hydrological changes in the area.

It is a 600-­grave cemetery to be run on a timeshare basis and blessed by that competent authority for the environment, Mepa; blessed by the local politicians; helped by the Environment and Planning Review Tribunal, which, like Pontius Pilate, washed its hands from such a catastrophic social and environmental crime; and developed, built and blessed by the Gozo Church diocese.

A cemetery whose first intakes were Mepa’s and the Gozo Diocese’s environmental and social conscience. Only God can forgive such an environmental and social crime, approved in 2013. To add insult to injury, this happened in Eco Gozo, cementing the lip service for ecological protection and the lack of understanding of biodiversity.

The good thing about the environment in 2013 is that I have run out of space and cannot delve deeper on the proposed changes to the outside development zones and the structure plan, the Xemxija scandalous planning decision, biodiversity loss and the invasion of alien species and other policies in the pipeline in favour of further myopic development, such as land reclamation, Ħondoq ir-­Rummien, the Malta­Gozo tunnel, both in Eco Gozo, all burdening the environment and society with more hidden costs and destruction.

What of 2014 one might ask? Following the laissez-faire in environmental and social awareness by politicians and other social entities since accession to the EU, one can only say that environmentalists, socialists and nationalists (nothing to do with politicians) atheists and believers alike would better fasten their seat belts. Past decisions can only bode further destruction of the environmental and social fabric, rendering our country a difficult and unhealthy place to live in.

The momentum of these negative impacts on society and the environment can already be seen and felt. Development and money matters are holding the political decision-makers of this country at gunpoint, at a cost to the environment and society.

Every time I get to think about this, with every thought of where all this will lead us, I feel I am unable to make out where we really stand. Am I standing on my head or on my feet? Is it cloudy or is it bright? Is it day or is it night? Am I wrong or am I right? Is this real?

Environment destruction is turning our lives upside down. But why cannot this country ever grow up?

I have as yet refrained from answering my question as to whether all this is sheer inexperience in good governance or a shrewd diabolical political psychology.

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