The state of the environment

In 1998, the Labour government had initiated the State of the Environment Report for Malta to assess where we stand and where we are going in terms of environmental quality. Recently, the second State of the Environment Report for Malta 2002 was issued.

On a global level, the Johannesburg Earth Summit also assessed the state of the earth's environment. Unfortunately, at both the local and global levels, the prospects for the environment are dismal.

A few months ago I had written that the pollution in Malta has reached alarming levels. Parts of the State of the Environment Report has now corroborated my statement. Levels of air pollution in some urban areas of Malta are confirmed by this report as greatly exceeding those of large metropolitan areas in Europe.

Meanwhile, seawater quality has deteriorated significantly. The situation is very alarming and government cannot shrug off its responsibility as Parliamentary Secretary George Pullicino has tried to do when presenting this report to the public.

Despite its importance, the State of the Environment Report 2002 has a number of shortcomings. Firstly, its voluminous length, nearly twice that of the State of the Environment Report for Europe issued by the EEA! A shorter report with more direct reference to the actual condition of the environment would have been more welcome because problems can be easily highlighted.

Secondly, there is a conspicuous absence of earth scientists on the team of experts. For example, the section on quarrying and mineral resources was compiled by a biologist rather then a geologist.

In addition, some of the people involved in the report were themselves directly responsible for environmental policies or participated in decisions on developments.

These persons can hardly be expected to be critical of deteriorating environmental conditions which have resulted from their own contributions to misguided policies or inapt recommendations.

More credible and objective sources are needed for future reports and contributors should be outside the incestuous circle of friends surrounding the MEPA. Finally, some environmental problems remain mostly unaccounted for in the State of the Environment Report.

It is impossible to review all the report in this short article so I will outline certain aspects and expound on the proactive approach of Labour's recently published environment document. Labour's document is intended as a guideline for the mitigation of important environmental problems.

Demography, land use and mineral resources

The report mentions fluctuations in population within the harbour conurbation. However, it fails to discuss in detail important issues such as the cause for decline in population in the old centres, namely Valletta.

In Johannesburg, George Pullicino announced initiatives for the gentrification of Valletta. I believe that prevention is better than cure. While government plans for Valletta, the report fails to indicate that parts of Sliema and close suburbs are in the initial stages of population decline. The economic loss and social problems generated by such urban decline should be tackled now.

Labour's environment document underlines that improving the quality of the urban environment by controlling air emissions and noise can contribute to halt urban decline.

Land use is a major concern in Malta, yet the State of the Environment Report only gives descriptive information. It fails to highlight the main problems and does not extrapolate future trends or suggest remedies for better land use.

Labour's environment policies tackle the problem of land use by a multi-faceted approach: the re-utilisation of disused residential buildings, a holistic management of territory as opposed to the present land speculation approach, and sea reclamation to ease pressure on present land uses.

In the section on mineral resources Adrian Mallia (MEPA officer) draws the conclusion that increasing the price of quarried stone and aggregate will somehow result in a decrease in quarrying which will mitigate the environmental damage caused by this activity.

In reality, a price increase in quarry products will only result in more socially unacceptable expensive housing. Ultimately, Mr Mallia's suggestion will not limit quarrying and concomitant environmental damage but increase quarry profit margins, which in itself is a motivation for more quarry extensions!

The main problems nowadays are the waste of good quality local stone material and the mindless over-extraction of poor quality material, which also has negative environmental consequences.

This is aggravated by MEPA's use of home-made unorthodox EIA methods for quarry assessment, coupled with senseless policies that are damaging both our environment and the quarry industry!

A Labour government plans to set up a geological survey to assist in the re-organisation of the local quarries into competitive, quality-based industries. The price of quarry products will then reflect quality.

There is no straightforward assessment of whether threatened species have faired better or worse since the first report of 1998. Until now nature reserves have been mostly limited to tiny and poorly accessible islands.

Bird reserves are usually found in marshland, while tree reserves are found in parts of remote valleys. These many disjointed and tiny havens do not seem to be providing the type of contact which citizens should have with their natural environment.

Labour's environment document refers to the setting up of different types of parks which will serve to increase public awareness on the environment. These parks will be the best form of environmental education and will ensure adequate protection of rare species.

Professor Patrick Schembri, the team leader contributing to this part of the report, also refers to some of the negative environmental impact of fish farming on water and sediment quality.

Remarkably, the same person had been hired by fish farm companies to draw up EIAs which presented evidence that fish farms do not significantly damage the seabed.

This was rebutted by video clips NGOs filmed of the seabed beneath the same fish farms, which revealed their disastrous effects. We expect more credible sources and objective reporting from the State of the Environment Report. In contrast to this, Labour's policy on curbing activities causing sea pollution is clear and unambiguous.

Coast

The State of the Environment Report reveals the alarming, poor condition of our coastal waters. Government has tried to hide this fact by decreasing the number of bathing water monitoring stations. However, even with such antics the facts still show that water quality in the period 1999 to 2001 was worse than the period 1996 to 1998.

Bacteriological contamination at Xaghjra remains high because of frequent rupturing of the sewage outfall pipe, and levels of toxic heavy metals along the coast of Maghtab is a major concern.

Equally shocking is the fact that nothing has been done about Rinella beach, which is subjected to occasional oil spills that have made it the most contaminated beach with hydrocarbons. What is the Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment doing about these problems? Does he prefer to take refuge in anonymity rather than face his responsibilities?

No wonder Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Johannesburg had exclaimed "Chi e questo uomo?" (Who is this man?) when greeted by George Pullicino. Labour will face up to these challenges.

Waste

Statistics on waste (also found in many other previous reports and strategies) abound in this section. Unfortunately, the main shortcomings of Government's waste policies have received little attention. The lack of a comprehensive waste separation scheme is a major setback to improvement in the waste management sector.

Equally disastrous is government's policy of mixing hazardous waste with non-hazardous waste at Maghtab landfill. The report also mentions the selection of sites for a new engineered landfill, but fails to mention that these sites have not been reviewed critically, especially since investigation of the geology of the six shortlisted sites was not carried out.

This breaches the EU Directive and US regulations on landfill site selection procedures. Labour's environment policy addresses all these issues, which are at the root of our waste management pro-blems.

Natural and technological risks

This section of the report mostly deals with radiation in the environment. More studies need to be carried out on this important issue. Radon gas levels in a locality in Malta are indicated as having reached a maximum of 199 Bq/m3. Significantly, the WHO recommended action level is 200 Bq/m3!

Strangely, this section makes no mention of natural hazards (also called geohazards) which are in-creasing in frequency mainly due to global climate change. These geohazards include flooding, ground subsidence which is threatening a number of urban areas and coastal erosion due to sea level rise and storms.

It seems that government remains uninterested in these global issues, despite George Pullicino's visit to Johannesburg to discuss global environmental problems. Labour's environment document indicates that the Geological survey will be set up specifically to look into these problems and design solutions for these up-coming problems of this century.

Air quality

The Labour government had introduced the monitoring of air quality because it sensed that this was another up-coming problem. The results of this initiative can be seen in the State of the Environ-ment Report, which reveals the desperate state of air, quality in some localities, such as Floriana.

The report also includes levels of benzene in the air, which in Hamrun is nearly double that of Berlin! Particulate air matter, or fine dust, is a persistent problem in some localities, such as Kalkara, Marsa and Zabbar.

Labour will be proactive on this serious problem and include air quality in its planning decisions (something which MEPA is not doing nowadays). Labour's policy stresses the need of "green lung" spaces in urbanised areas. Kalkara valley will be one of these protected areas.

Effective controls on vehicle emissions will also be introduced. The PN Government's response has been to hide this problem by blaming desert dust for high particulate air matter! While fine clay and silt from the Sahara desert may be significant, I cannot understand why it tends to accumulate only in our main urban areas!

The PN Government's inertia in responding to environmental problems seems to have disheartened even our most active and respected NGOs. Regrettably, these NGOs have now been overcome by a defeatist attitude and find solace in supporting Government's obsession with EU membership.

The persistent environmental problems of some EU regions like Attica (Athens), Sicily and others, show that EU membership does not provide the solution to environmental problems, as some NGOs would like us to believe.

Facts show that environmental problems have been effectively tackled by many European governments, irrespective of whether they are members of the EU or not (the environmental track record of Norway and Switzerland remains outstanding).

The solution to local problems comes from effective government and good leadership coupled with honest and competent management. These are the qualities which we currently lack in this country, without which the environmental situation cannot be expected to improve.