Malta’s political class has waged war on the islands’ natural heritage ever since independence in 1964. At that time, Malta’s natural environment was far richer and biodiversity more numerous than today.
Successive governments have sanctioned the pillaging of these beautiful islands and continue to do so to this very day. Maltese society, in its majority, has, across decades, endorsed these actions, voting in politicians who were at best grossly uninformed or at worst indifferent to the damage being inflicted to the country’s marine, air and land ecosystems.
The current crop of politicians continues to pursue the same reprehensible policies. Ignorance may have had a part to play in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s but not after that and certainly not now.
“Humanity is waging war on nature. This is senseless and suicidal. The consequences of our recklessness are already apparent in human suffering, towering economic losses and the accelerating erosion of life on earth.” These are the opening words by the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres in the foreword of the groundbreaking report published by UNEP in February called ‘Making peace with nature’.
This is a scientific blueprint to tackle the climate, biodiversity and pollution emergencies. These serious concerns are mirrored on paper in the European Green Deal strategy.
The UN has sent this report to all the governments of its member states, including Malta. It declares that it is not possible to reach any of the UN Sustainable Development Goals unless we stop the war on nature, understand that we are part of nature and collaborate with it. This requires the wholesale protection and restoration of land and marine wild habitats and the cessation of the massacre of animals across the globe.
Human well-being depends on the quality of our interactions with other species and with the water, air and soils that make up our environment. Maltese policymakers should be championing policies to reduce global warming, mitigate climate change, protect nature and avert the extinction of Maltese biodiversity. They should be leading the fight for clean air and a contaminants-free Mediterranean Sea.
Malta’s elected representatives have been entrusted with protecting the islands’ soils and tasked with overseeing sustainable fishing practices on which the livelihood and health of so many in Maltese society depends. Fish and marine mammal populations in the Mediterranean need to be allowed to grow unhindered to preindustrial levels.
Policymakers, nonetheless, continue to follow growth policies based on the exploitation of nature. There are very hard limits to growth in a finite Malta and we have hit all of them.
The UNEP executive director refers to the “toxic trail of economic growth, pollution and waste”. The economic model that is desperately needed for this century is one based on balance, where growth in certain areas and de-growth in others are not an end to themselves but simply a way of maintaining human activity in balance and within ecological boundaries that allow other species and habitats to exist, thrive and survive.
Malta’s and the EU’s ambitions for a circular economy within the context of economic growth are disingenuous. Such strategies create too much waste, most of which cannot be effectively collected and recycled, ultimately being disposed of in landfills or incinerated and spilling over into the environment, all of which are highly polluting.
This is Malta’s predicament. A circular economy can only be successful within a policy of a balanced sustainable economy for Malta.
Overall growth is irrelevant. What matters is the well-being of people and the planet.