Comino is a case study for de-growth

We can see it, touch it, smell it and feel it.  There isn’t a day we don’t encounter it, and there isn’t a conversation that doesn’t somehow touch on it.  For good or bad, it has become the nation’s number one obsession – growth and its impact.

Our construction sector in all its fantasising will not countenance any limitation. Our hospitality industry cannot get enough of it. Our government and opposition revel in it while whole sections of our society accelerate into it at pace.

On an archipelago that measures a minuscule 316 square kilometres with a fragile ecosystem and a limited resource base, we continue to believe that our growth trajectory knows no bounds, our capacity and our potential are endless. 

Despite the realities piling in on us. 

We mimic those who melt in the highest temperatures on record while continuing to deny our climate crisis.  For us, the sun shines, the hay is made and it is for others to think, reflect or hesitate.

Yet simultaneously, each of us knows. As we try to negotiate life in the growth fast lane, our nerve endings scream for us to slow down.  But the accelerator is stuck.

New builds are up, hotel beds are up, airport numbers are up, car numbers are up, job numbers are up, incomes are up, profits are up.  So, what could possibly be wrong? Best in class, best in Europe, best in the world we intone.

And yet, we know something, many things are just not right.  More and more of us know, to our individual and collective dismay, that our growth model is suffocating us. 

Despite its short-term benefits, it is, like our political model, inherently flawed and increasingly out of control.  We continue to run, ever faster up the down escalator.

Despite this being blindingly obvious, “official Malta” continues to deny it; more, more and yet more remains their mantra. 

Many wish to change both direction and speed but fear its consequences. The notion that more might mean less and that less could be more is deemed defeatist, environmental twaddle, jealousy or even anti-Maltese. Certainly not of the “real” world.

Not for us talk of a genuine green economy, of sustainability or, perish the thought, de-growth. The idea that things should, could be done differently deemed to be folly. Our economic, political and cultural cheerleaders of “growthism” know best.

The good news, though, is that Malta is already practising de-growth in the specific context of Comino. Even our denialist government recognises that de-growth is the only possible (and urgently needed) “solution” to the ravaging of that iconic island. 

Only the most devious and self-interested individuals, companies and their political minders now deny that the only viable future for Comino is to “degrow” its use.  The Maltese have now accepted that continued “growth” on Comino is not simply unacceptable but actually unrealistic by any metric.

We have accepted (even while our PM offers a masterclass in wriggling) that unrestrained, unregulated and ever-increasing growth in and around Comino simply cannot continue. 

And not just for the sake of those who use it appropriately but more importantly for its protection and preservation (and possible recovery), for Malta’s future and in order to end its ongoing plunder for purely short-term private gain.

The debate on Comino highlights a key element of the de-growth perspective – the centrality of accepting the reality of limits.  Physical, environmental, resource, human use and commercial limits and above all limits on counterproductive “growthism”. 

Above all, the debate on Comino and on overdevelopment in Malta more generally highlights the pressing need to not just discuss alternative ideas, plans, landscapes and strategies but to actively begin to shape and implement them.

To ignore the lessons of Comino is to wilfully collude in the destruction of the land upon which we live and on which we depend.  It is also a living case study in injustice.