A challenging option for Malta

The enactment of new planning legislation in 1992 and the setting up of the Planning Authority (now MEPA), brought about a major change in physical planning for development.

The new system of development plans and the emerging local plans has taken on board the environmental dimension, for example by policy guidance regarding the protection of the natural and built heritage, together with the protection of natural resources.

The legislative amendments of the Development Planning Act enacted in 1997 and 2001 mainly addressed procedural issues regarding development control and permitting process and approval of development plans and subsidiary policy. No changes were made which affected the implementation aspects of plans or planning policy.

As the new planning documents come on stream and are formally approved, giving local plan coverage for the whole of Malta with a robust planning framework, it is time to take stock and evaluate strategic options for the future direction of the planning system.

So far, these planning documents are being largely applied in a reactive stance against which development proposals are assessed. There is no coherent mechanism which takes forward the various initiatives contemplated in the plans for environmental improvements. Neither does it implement those actions in the various sectors that have land use implications and are essential for the successful outcome of corollary policy measures.

An example of this is the regeneration of our historic cores. These areas suffer from run-down premises and surroundings that drastically affect their ability to attract new investment and so perpetuate the downward spiral of decline and population loss.

In this respect, a holistic approach which addresses the physical, social and economic improvements is urgently required in these areas. It must closely involve the resident communities and private business. In this respect, land use decisions need to be integrated with other activities, such as education, health, community safety, leisure facilities, working in partnership across sectors and putting the individual as the focus of all our actions.

Spatial planning

The regulation and planning of land use is not something that can be considered in isolation. The ways in which land is used are linked to environmental change on many different scales. Air quality, the water cycle, biological diversity, transport and energy production and use are all spatially related. To a significant extent policies in these fields depend for their success on decisions about land use.

Land use planning has become an accepted and legitimate activity intended to address the wider social and community conflicts associated with the use and development of land and property. Planning has evolved over time as a facilitating process for conflict mediation associated with the development of land and property, the creation of local economic development and community regeneration opportunities, environmental enhancement and protection, and the provision of infrastructure.

The role and nature of planning is changing. Planning practice is being increasingly influenced by developments in economic development, environmental management and transport. At the same time there is a remorseless push for horizontal integration of the work of related professions. There is a growing desire for "joined-up government" with greater emphasis upon co-ordination of sectors and the involvement of communities as stakeholders.

These trends have a planning echo in the European concept of "spatial planning", which broadens the approach to issues across a wider perspective than town and country planning.

A large number of EU measures influence the planning system in a variety of ways and these derive from diverse areas such as policies on the environment, transport, regional development, agriculture, fisheries, EIA, birds, habitats and Seveso directives. More recently there have been developments in EU non-legislative planning-related initiatives, including the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), INTERREG and the integrated coastal zone management demonstration programme.

Underlying these programmes is a desire on the part of the European Commission to encourage the development, at European, national and regional levels of government, of systems of spatial planning. These explicitly seek to bring together territorial, social, economic and environmental planning in one integrated process - as an instrument of sustainable development.

ESDP aims to promote balanced and sustainable development in the EU, in the form of improved economic and social cohesion, the conservation of natural resources and the cultural heritage, and a more balanced competitiveness of the European territory. Although this is a non-binding document, it may reinforce the shift towards spatial planning rather than land use planning.

This new approach calls for strategic management of spaces and territories in ways which organise land uses with a wider regard for the balance between developmental and environmental objectives. The distinction between planning as a system of land use regulation and planning as a process of managing spatial and environmental change is becoming greater and greater.

The implications of sustainable development

The formation of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA) and the merging of environmental protection and land-use planning, present us with a unique and unprecedented opportunity to widen the scope of our activities in environmental directions. The Authority is now responsible to implement both the Development Planning Act and the Environment Protection Act, both of which, subsequent to the legislative amendments in 2001, include the principle of sustainable development.

Sustainable development has various definitions and it is difficult to translate its principles into actions. Basically, sustainable development seeks an acceptable quality of life for present and future generations, recognising that the actions of the present affect the inheritance of future generations.

Sustainable development is increasingly recognised as the key to managing economic and environmental interdependence. It is neither a fixed concept nor a narrowly defined process, but an approach in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development and institutional change are made consistent with future as well as present needs. Of necessity, therefore, it involves difficult choices and depends on decisive political action.

Responsibility for securing implementation

Government has already taken action last year to set up a National Commission for Sustainable Development, which brings together many Government Departments, agencies and NGOs, together with the economic players.

This Commission has the brief to:

¤ advocate sustainable development across all sectors and review progress on achieving such development

¤ identify any relevant process or policy which may be undermining sustainable development and propose alternative processes or policies

¤ identify trends which may significantly give rise to unsustainable development

¤ increase awareness about the need for sustainable development

¤ encourage and stimulate good practice in the use and management of natural resources, and

¤ prepare a national strategy for sustainable development.

Preparations are currently in hand to draft a national strategy for sustainable development.

Responsibilities for safeguarding and enhancing the environment are spread across many different agencies and so there is an urgent need for integrating the various initiatives and actions to secure a coherent set of actions. Securing sustainable development requires actions across many sectors and this cannot be achieved solely by land use planning policies or action for environmental regulation by MEPA.

Government can for example take a leading role in supporting a shift in tax burdens away from employment generating business towards polluters. Green taxation measures will help underpin actions to achieve environmental improvements. A start in line with this direction has already been made in recent budgets .

Measures to secure sustainable development

Environmental performance has to be evaluated across many sectors and integration of efforts is required in various policy stances, which are not strictly land use related.

An example is the adoption of Codes of Good Agricultural Practice by the agricultural community. This aims to improve farm management, disposal of wastes, prudent use of fertilisers, protection of biodiversity, support for organic farming, maintenance of the rural landscape, and so forth.

Protection of marine resources can be achieved by proper management of fisheries, controlling dumping at sea and preventing pollution from port operations. Energy conservation can save a lot on the burning of fuels and resultant pollution, giving incentives to encourage investment in renewable energies and at the same time taking action to reduce emissions.

Industry can be regulated through the provisions of Integrated Pollution Control Licensing. It can also be encouraged to prevent the production of waste and recovery rather than disposing of the by-products and wastes arising from industrial processes. Grant assistance for industrial development can be conditioned by environmental regulatory requirements.

Government policy and investment in road transport can continue to support economic growth by relieving congestion at bottlenecks, which represent inefficiencies in the road network. Awareness needs to be built up about the unsustainable aspects of increasing use of vehicle transport. Full control of CO2 emissions from motor vehicles will appreciably improve air quality. Scrapping schemes can be introduced to encourage the replacement of older cars with new, environment-friendly models.

Tourism can enhance the cultural and historical assets by injecting new funds for their upkeep. Tourism development needs to be sustainable taking into account the carrying capacity of the environment, which it can impact negatively through over-development.

Integration of policy measures to secure sustainable development should be aimed primarily at the driving forces behind environmental degradation. That is, rather than addressing the symptoms of environmental decline it should address the "upstream" underlying causes.

Need for a new approach

Growing concerns about environmental issues require new approaches, which integrate better the decision-making processes with the implementation aspects across the various sectors. Environmental protection and spatial planning have a leading role to play in this respect.

The transition to a sustainable form of development requires commitment at the highest political level. It requires integration of environmental considerations across different policy sectors. At Government level, integration is important to ensure consistency across the range of policies contributing to sustainable development.

It also encourages mutually supporting policy formulation and delivery and enables environmental concerns to be addressed in an effective and comprehensive manner. At a sectoral level, integration is fundamental to the decoupling of economic growth and environmental degradation, by promoting economic and environmental efficiency through reduced materials and energy use, waste prevention and minimisation, reuse and recycling.

Integration must also be pursued at macro-economic and fiscal policy levels, to reflect the value of natural as well as human-made capital, to account for natural resource use and depletion, to internalise environmental costs and to provide a more balanced and full measurement of national growth and prosperity.

The principle of shared responsibility for the environment requires a broadly based involvement of public bodies, private enterprise and the general public so as to achieve environmental policy objectives.

Spatial planning can support the objectives of sustainable development in a number of ways:

¤ by promoting efficiency in the use of energy, transport and natural resources,

¤ by promoting the most effective use of already developed areas, and

¤ by protecting and enhancing the natural environment.

The land use planning system introduced over 10 years ago has been instrumental in encouraging and facilitating public awareness of environmental issues and participation in them. There are other instruments like environmental impact assessment procedures, strategic environmental assessment of plans and policies, and integrated pollution control, which can assist the process in addressing environmental concerns in a structured manner.

Recommendations by the Royal Commission on Pollution (UK)

The Royal Commission on Pollution in the UK has been drawing up various studies over the past four years examining whether present arrangements in the UK constitute an effective, accountable and transparent system for protecting the environment. Obviously, the UK situation is different because planning and environmental protection have long been in existence. However, given that the local planning system is modelled on the UK system, there are lessons to be learnt from these studies, which may have a local application.

In a final concluding report, the Royal Commission has put forward six action areas intended to secure a more efficient and effective system to achieve sustainable development:

¤ clearer policies and objectives for the environment

¤ statutory recognition of the central role of town and country planning in protecting and enhancing the environment

¤ rationalising the overall system for environmental planning by introducing integrated spatial strategies covering all aspects of sustainable development

¤ much improved availability of information about the environment

¤ ensuring that strategies cover all forms of land use, and

¤ further steps to engage a wider range of people in decisions about setting and achieving environmental goals.

All the recommendations put forward by the Commission are important, but perhaps in the local context recommendation no. 3 is the most significant and relevant. The proposal involves the preparation of an "integrated spatial strategy", which takes account of all spatially related activities and all spatially related aspects of environmental capacity.

The Commission recommends that these plans should have a time horizon of 25 years and cover all the spatial implications of all government policies drawing heavily on an environmental report which analyses the current state of the environment and extrapolates the pressures on it from current trends.

The Royal Commission recommended that an integrated spatial strategy should have a number of key characteristics among which to:

¤ address whether certain areas are reaching their environmental limits to their capacity to accommodate further growth

¤ ensure that development takes forms that will minimise the need to travel

¤ cover all activities and policies which have significant spatial implications for the environment

¤ make explicit the demands on environmental resources entailed by developments projected or proposed in the area

¤ assess whether development demands can be met in ways that are environmentally sustainable

¤ contain rigorous analysis of environmental, social and economic factors

¤ assess pressures on the state of the environment, based on projections and scenarios

¤ extend sufficiently far into the future to identify trends that will be unsustainable in the long term (25 years)

¤ provide a robust basis for large investment decisions by public bodies and large corporations

¤ incorporate carefully chosen indicators for sustainability

¤ include quantified targets for protection and improvement of the environment to be achieved by certain dates

¤ involve a partnership with a number of public bodies

¤ include a strong focus on mechanisms for delivery

¤ have a firm statutory basis with the lead body clearly designated and all other bodies placed under a duty to cooperate.

Current Structure Plan review

The current Structure Plan has taken on board some of the measures suggested by the Royal Commission. Some of the policies in the Plan involve implementation aspects, which are clearly the responsibility of other agencies. Although the Plan was approved by Parliament, it was subsequently treated as a planning document belonging to the Authority, rather than being adopted as a national document.

Leading up to the current review various topic papers have been prepared. There is still scope to refine the process further and ensure that the new policy framework of the various sectors takes into account sustainable development principles and establishes cross linkages across the policy sectors.

The aspects which concern corollary issues to land use aspects; targets for sustainability (e.g., waste minimisation and recycling targets; air and water quality targets, etc.) and accountabilities for implementation, can be included in an ancillary document to be endorsed by cabinet as a government document in the form of an integrated spatial development plan.

An integrated spatial development plan

An integrated spatial development plan would fulfill a number of interrelated functions. It would take forward the vision and key objectives for sustainable development set out in the National Strategy for Sustainable Development (NSSD) being formulated by the National Commission for Sustainable Development, elaborating upon them and translating them into concrete actions by identified agencies linking these to measurable targets.

It would thus, as part of a broad iterative process, inform the development of strategies and programmes of other public agencies and service providers. The process would also take account of existing strategies and programmes, assess and test them for compatibility with other strategies and programmes, and for impact in terms, particularly, of sustainability, and reshape them to meet the objectives of the NSSD and the integrated spatial development plan.

The integrated spatial development plan would translate the strategic and policy framework emerging in the Structure Plan Review process into action strategies across all sectors and linking the environmental, social and economic components. It would therefore have an important role to address the linkages between economic, social and environmental issues. It would provide the necessary vision and policy framework to guide the future path of change thereby influencing the future investment decisions in all sectors.

The spatial development plan should also take on board the principles set out in the European Spatial Development Perspective as a guiding framework particularly two of the spatial planning objectives of:

¤ securing parity of access to infrastructure and knowledge, and

¤ sustainable development, prudent management of resources and protection of natural and cultural heritage.

For the spatial development plan to be successful it needs to be supported by a wide range of public policy responses, with clear accountabilities for implementation spelt out and performance indicators identified to be able to measure success or otherwise of implementation. MEPA is best placed to undertake this task on behalf of Government, given the Authorityís recently acquired wider role and functions.

Indeed, the Environment Protection Act gives the Authority this responsibility and lead role (Article 7 (b) (ii) requires the Authority to establish long and short term objectives and strategies taking into consideration the advice and recommendations, where appropriate, of the National Commission for Sustainable Development. Difficult choices will have to be made, but we must face up to the challenge if we want to ensure an improvement in the quality of life in a sustainable manner.

Godwin Cassar is MEPA's director-general