Clarity and fairness on environmental permits

For many years now, a portion of Malta’s environmental risks has emanated from economic activity that has been regulated by a patchwork of laws and, in minor cases, under-regulated.

The uncomfortable truth is that activities such as quarrying, cement packaging, shipbuilding, and pharmaceutical production amongst others – activities whose processes may cause lasting environmental harm – have operated in a fragmented legal landscape.

Many of these industries have always required development permits from the Planning Authority, but not all required environmental permits. For example, activities such as waste management, backfilling of excavation voids, energy production, among others, were issued with environmental permits with conditions for the mitigation of their negative impact on the environment. Others like concrete batching plants, tarmac plants, and even cement silos, were previously unregulated.

We are finally on the cusp of standardising all such environmental permitting regulations.

Under one body of rules, the Environment and Resources Authority will bring over 60 industrial and waste management operations, and even activities related to biodiversity and the natural environment, under a single regime for ERA to regulate.

And in line with the level of environment risk they present, polluters must pay application fees commensurate to that impact.

An entire swathe of industries will be brought up to higher standards, for we have finally created a level-playing field for all such operations and activities, and how we regulate their negative impact on the environment.

And crucially, for two-thirds of these environmental permitting applications (EPRs), the public is now being given the right to participate in the environmental permitting process, by submitting feedback and making representations in the public process, with the right to appeal any such decisions before the Environment and Planning Review Tribunal, guaranteeing fairness and justice in this decision-making process.

So for Malta this is a turning point.

We have long struggled to balance economic development with environmental protection. And ours is a society that constantly calls for checks and balances on the way economic players affect our lives, and our urban and natural environment. By applying a uniform polluter-pays principle, the EPRs confront environmental responsibility and regulatory fairness.

Following an eight-week public consultation period, we emerged with a body of rules that was based on three core principles.

Firstly, by giving clarity to anyone carrying out the activities listed in these regulations. By classifying their operations according to their environmental risk – low, medium, or high – each level determines the respective processing time, and fees. By matching the criteria to the environmental impact and scale of activity, the EPRs give businesses predictability, as well as clear permitting guidelines on natural, scientific or recreational activities in natural settings.

Secondly, it delivers fairness to those players who long raised their game on compliance and clean industry. Legally established operators will now have to apply for clearance within six months, to achieve full compliance within four years. And that transition period is both fair and necessary: it upholds environmental justice, without undermining economic viability.

And finally, Maltese citizens will be scrutinising the whole process, from application to decision, gaining the right to comment as well as to challenge decisions in an independent tribunal. It is a substantive shift toward environmental democracy, which we know fulfils the exigencies of our engaged civil society. ERA itself is bound by strict deadlines to vet these applications: 90 days for low-risk activities, up to 9 months for high-risk activities; this makes the process transparent for the public, and allows businesses to plan ahead.

Do not sell the EPRs cheaply as regulatory burdens. Asking operators to pay for the mitigation of their own environmental risk is not punitive. It is rational and fair. The EPR application fees are instruments of accountability under the “polluter pays” principle.

And nor should we see environmental integrity and economic growth as mutually exclusive. Instead, they should be regulated in tandem. Malta cannot afford regulatory complacency, because environmental degradation carries costs our society pays for in health issues and the degradation of natural spaces and lost biodiversity.

Kevin Mercieca is CEO of the Environment and Resources Authority.