Even within the current development frenzy, where proposed development within ODZ land hardly raises eyebrows anymore, some planning applications still manage to have a jawdropping effect by virtue of their brazen nature. For instance, PA 08021/19 proposes the development of a terraced house off Triq Dun Karm Cachia in Żebbuġ, Gozo, within a site which is substantially an ODZ one and only partially within the scheme of developable land.
The site would qualify in a heartbeat for a belvedere given its vantage location along the ridge from where one can partake of unhindered and expansive views of a valley landscape.
The same site, which lies along the margins of the existing UCA, does not constitute part of any development block and no road alignment exists for the same site, which is inevitably of a high landscape value/sensitivity. The presumption against the development of such areas is naturally entrenched within a welter of existing planning policies.
Quoting verbatim from one of the objections submitted to this planning application, “This development will have a very strong impact on the visual amenity of the urban edge as it will be a standalone structure in an area that has always been agricultural in nature without any built structures on them. This cannot be deemed a sensitive intervention on the ridge as any structures and change of use of the space from agricultural to residential will increase the building sprawl and obfuscate the clear ridge boundary.”
The UN climate meeting turned out to be nothing but a damp squib
This is sacrosanct reasoning that should definitely resonate with any planning decisionmaking board. Given the recent successful overturning of an ODZ permit for a separate ridge development, still in Żebbuġ, in the wake of an appeal lodged by the ERA, the PA would do well to apply with vigour its own policies when deliberating on this particular case, to safeguard remaining open ridge areas in Gozo from further development. Let’s not kick off 2020 with yet another ridge ODZ permit approval for Gozo!
A lot of hot air in Madrid...
The latest highprofile UN climate meeting held in Madrid (which stepped in at the eleventh hour to take the baton from unrestriven Chile) at the start of this month was meant to give substance to the commitments subscribed to by various governments in 2015 through the Paris agreement. Instead, it turned out to be nothing but a damp squib.
In fact, despite the lastditch attempts to clinch a meaningful deal, with the meeting extending for 48 hours beyond its scheduled closure, COP25 gave little to write home about.
So much so that Antonio Guterres, the UN’s General Secretary, did not mince his words at the end of the same meeting when asserting that “I am disappointed with the results of COP25. The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation and finance to tackle the climate crisis.”
Many others echoed his views, including 14yearold climate activist Alexandria Villasenor, who drew an interesting parallel:
“The difference between the youth on the streets and the negotiations is that the youth on the streets are acting with urgency. COP25 has failed us and it’s another year of failure.”
The representative of the small Pacific archipelago of Tuvalu, where two of the nine constituent islands risk being overwhelmed by rising waters, was even more explicit, implying that countries blocking the clinching of a meaningful deal (for example, the US), were guilty of “crimes against humanity”.
The Paris agreement was meant to cap the global increase in air temperature to 1.5 degrees, but some climate scientists are already cynically affirming that we might need to brace ourselves for a three degree increase scenario, given that the Paris targets would only be achievable if commitments by countries are ramped up fivefold, starting off from 2020.
And despite all the stark warnings on the wall, some countries are staunchly in denial. Only last week, despite the persistent bush fires which have been raging Down Under and which have consumed vast swathes of land in the country’s southeast, Australia’s conservative Prime Minister refused to rein in the country’s burgeoning coal export industry, which alone accounts for seven per cent of all global greenhouse emissions.
Yet another country in denial is Brazil, courtesy of yet another conservative statesman – Jair Bolsonaro – who has watered down enforcement on crimes related to the clearing of the Amazon forest and who shrugs off criticism from the EU about his dubious environmental policies by stating that the EU should (paraphrasing) “reforest itself and not continue to bother Brazil”.
Two of the most insidious threats to the achievement of a meaningful global climate deal include a convoluted ‘getoutofjail’ card, in the form of a complex card credit accounting and trading system, which is being resorted to by big polluters such as China, India and Brazil as a way to save face and to offset their own surging emissions, as well an attempt to refute and renege science.
The latter avenue, although sounding improbable, is actively being pursued by rich countries who want to do away with historical emissions data and to start a clean slate in terms of setting future targets.
Such a move, tantamount to a shifting of the goalposts, was rightly denounced by the Palestinian ambassador Ammar Hijazi, chairing the G77 and China committees, who did not beat about the bush in stating that: “This throws all history in the garbage, it’s acting as if emissions started today.”
Brazil even made a preposterous, albeit unsuccessful, attempt at having a scientific reference to the links between greenhouse emissions, land use and oceans deleted from the final declaration text.
As things currently stand, Britain, hosting the next climate COP meeting in Glasgow in November 2020, will have a veritable climate to climb if a comprehensive and multilateral climate deal is to be forged. As if Brexit was not enough a hot potato to handle!