Looking back over the last year from an environmental perspective, it was unfortunately again dominated by planning controversies.
Discontent about the direction of planning and environmental governance in Malta is hardly new. Joseph Muscat began as prime minister in 2013 with a promise to turn the situation around by separating the planning authority from the environment authority. It was one of the big political promises he had made.
Enough time has now passed to judge that the demerger has yielded no obvious positive results on the ground. While the idea was ostensibly to strengthen the government’s environmental arm and to control bad planning, the opposite appears to have taken place.
The PA has been unshackled from its environmental duties. The general impression has only intensified that the PA favours big developers and has little regard for environmental consequences.
The perception has also prevailed that the PA is riddled with conflicts of interest and shades of political interference. To drive this point home, in 2019, a planning board member resigned after a court ruling found that he had a conflict of interest on the controversial large-scale db project in St George’s Bay. As a result, the permit was declared to be invalid.
The processing of a controversial permit to redevelop a rural building outside Qala was also overshadowed by a perception of conflict of interest, this time linked to Planning Commission chairwoman Elizabeth Ellul. The fact that the Environment and Resources Authority must now resort to formally appealing that decision reflects a badly structured and malfunctioning planning system.
In October 2019, the PA’s executive chairman, Johann Buttigieg, resigned. It has yet to be seen whether new leadership at the PA, under the direction set by a new prime minister, will bring better environmental results.
Dr Muscat’s final year at the helm of the country has been characterised by civil society street rallies, protesting against corruption and calling for good governance. Reflecting this trend, several environmental protests also took place last year.
An especially heated issue concerned the widening and building of big roads, involving a large uptake of rural land and the uprooting of numerous trees. New roads cater for the increase in vehicular traffic but these infrastructural developments are not supported by adequate planning for alternative transport options. Protestors gathered and made themselves heard but Infrastructure and Planning Minister Ian Borg seems unfazed and set to follow his plans regardless.
Protestors were more successful in their opposition to the expansion of the American University of Malta campus in Cottonera. Yet, there again, the perception persists that the PA is more sensitive to partisan political concerns than to good planning sense.
Protests were also held to complain about the government’s unjustifiably slow progress on its redrafting of the fuel stations policy, which enabled the building of large petrol stations in rural areas. Calls for better regulation of the entire building sector have intensified as the overheated building industry sunk to new lows last year, with sad incidents in which construction works caused adjacent properties to collapse.
Dr Muscat’s political leadership is over. In his early days, when he campaigned for power as leader of the Opposition, he had promised greater environmental protection. The environmental track record of the Nationalist Party was one of his favourite political targets.
But now that his time is up, actions have spoken louder than words. The situation has gone from bad to worse. Overall, Dr Muscat’s environmental legacy is nothing to be proud of.