Five environment NGOs on Tuesday expressesd alarm at the “aggressive, non-stop, and unsustainable development” taking place in Gozo.
In a statement, eNGOs Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar, MaltaARCH, Moviment Graffitti, Ramblers Association and Wirt Għawdex echoed Gozitan mayors’ and residents’ alarm at the development applications on the sister island, which they said had almost doubled in four years, increasing from 787 in 2016 to 1,314 in 2020.
The applications had become “an unstoppable torrent”, threatening everything from open fields in Nadur to the skyscape around the Ġgantija Temples.
The number of apartments has increased by almost 300%, as projects grew disproportionately large, destroying the character of Gozo’s villages, while six-storey high, blank party walls uglified Gozo’s skylines.
Most of this development was purely speculative, ignoring the needs of Gozo’s local communities and the impact of this development on Gozitans’ quality of life, they noted.
The organisations said overdevelopment has already stripped Gozo of much of its charm. The approval of massive projects in Żebbuġ, Marsalforn, Xlendi, Qala and Nadur - the type of projects by Joseph Portelli, Mark Agius and their collaborators - violated urban planning regulations and zoning policies and can only be explained by the widespread corruption of Malta’s planning system.
The application for a five-storey block within 150 metres of the Ġgantija UNESCO World Heritage prehistoric temples has generated 1,800 objections, drawing international press condemnation as “a tragedy and a sign of pure greed”. This is the result of the present climate where developers are emboldened by the “elasticisation of planning policies”, resulting in the "destruction of our islands", they said.
Gozo’s countryside, they said, is also under siege - out of 1,314 permits issued in 2020, 223 or 17% were ODZ, twice the rate of ODZ permits in Malta. “That’s almost a fifth of all permits in Gozo as urbanisation spreads beyond village cores. The loss of beautiful landscapes and the illegal closure of country paths is a blow to Gozo’s potential to attract rambler tourists.”
The organisations noted that after decades of viewing construction positively, Gozitans are now "militating against overdevelopment", as communities struggle with the effects of weekend invasions, increased property prices and parking problems. Air pollution, never previously associated with Gozo, is now high in Victoria, Fontana, Qala and other towns, impacting residents’ health.
“The model of low-rise hotels built in traditional Gozitan style, is being replaced by high-rise self-catering accommodation which ruins the very village-scapes that tourists seek in Gozo.”
The call is out among Gozitan residents to stop mimicking Malta, already largely ruined, and instead foster what is truly Gozitan through incentives aimed at restoration and traditional architecture, rather than blanket incentives that reward unattractive mass-market construction, they said.
The NGOs said planning policies need to change to cater for Gozo rather than one-size-fits-all regulations like the Design Guidance of 2015 which were wrecking villages all over Malta and Gozo.
They said that for Gozo’s economy to recover post-COVID, it needs to scrupulously protect its natural and built heritage to attract tourists in the face of strong competition from tourist resorts all around the Mediterranean.
"Gozo deserves better," they said.