Returning from a trip abroad last month I found our airport largely deserted, bar a host of expat workers corralled through slightly disorganised border health checks. The newly opened, brightly illuminated car park was eerily empty, deserted like the drop-off in front of the building. I picked up my car to drive home in the dark of night. And for the first time in 20 years I lost my way. Proliferating construction sites necessitated unfamiliar detours which finally made me miss the right exit.
I looked at all the new flyovers, high-rises, traffic junctions, road enlargements and petrol stations which the pandemic has now silenced for a brief moment, and felt melancholic. I thought about the horse-drawn sulkies, the farmers tending their fields amidst clouds of wild flowers and my lone, coastal walks suspended between azure skies and the blue sea – a world from yesterday which is now disappearing fast.
Malta’s population is growing continuously year after year. Last month we counted 442,285 inhabitants, next month it will be more. Extrapolating current growth rates we will be 449,000 in 2030. More people could mean more housing, more offices, more cars, more pollution, more traffic jams but also economic growth and growing prosperity for us all, not only for the rich and well connected.
Most of us depend on jobs created by the destruction of our known world and Malta’s transformation into a purely urban setting, with little patience for our heritage and rural past. Like Singapore, Hong Kong and Monaco, Malta is one of the most densely populated countries on earth, with 1,380 residents per square kilometre, which includes Gozo.
Nobody wants to turn back the clock. We live healthier lives than 20 years ago when I moved to Malta. People are more prosperous, with 75 per cent of the population owning property ‒ a larger percentage than anywhere in Europe. Our economy, growing faster than our peers’, lifted all boats, even the small ones. Yet there’s no denying that we are eating up our own living space. Even the densest of urbanisations have a hinterland. We don’t. We have nowhere to go once our 316 square kilometres are built up. Hence we have to be parsimonious with open space. We have to strike a path between continuing growth and firm limits to urban sprawl.
We should protect the slivers of nature we have left – for the sake of our visitors and for our own sanity
At the core of our economic success and unwavering building boom stand tourism and tax incentives – to corporations and individuals alike who can enjoy a tax residency in Malta or even Maltese citizenship under the condition of bringing money into the country and having a Maltese home commensurate to their tax status.
We all, restaurateurs, shop keepers, plumbers, road workers, teachers, bureaucrats and businessmen profit from a set-up which riles fellow European countries and provokes increasing scrutiny from abroad. This makes our economic model fragile and risky ‒ more so when unfettered urbanisation begins to erode the attractiveness of our islands as a tourist destination. This process has surely been intensified by the pandemic: Crowded places and mass tourism will be eyed with suspicion for years to come.
Recent data are hard to come by. Googling “Farm land in Malta” will not show links to statistics, but to dozens of real estate homepages selling farm land to the highest bidder. A 2016 World Bank report shows that arable land, which includes dry farming and husbandry, has shrunk from 55 per cent in 1960 to less than 30 per cent in 2016. In 2010, the last reliable data I could find, 18,000 people were farmers in Malta and Gozo, 2,000 of them full time. Seventy-five per cent of farmers are tenants, not owning the land they till, making them even more vulnerable to rising ground rents.
The battle over unbuilt land is an all-out war between conservationists, farmers, hunters, developers and their politicians, which will intensify over the years. Bogus arguments entrench partisan positions. Neither residency schemes, golden passports nor imported labour, all of which contribute to economic growth, are a root cause for our uncontrolled development, as so often is claimed, but our specific breed of crony capitalism. Permits are handed out to friends and buddies, or for a discrete envelope; construction without permit is rarely punished; and grand development schemes for the future of our isles have personal, commercial interests at heart, not the sustainable development of our economy and our society.
Farmers have to compete with a real estate market which makes any attempt to grow veggies uneconomical. A tumolo of land in Siġġiewi is on offer for €500,000 at the moment. No amount of cauliflower sold on farmers’ markets can return such investment. Nationalistic arguments about food safety miss the point. We already import 80 per cent of what we eat. So what? Cities don’t grow veggies. This is what international trade is for.
Our farmers are needed to garden our island, to enliven ancient traditions, to preserve nature, to teach our children and to attract tourists. We have to thank farmers for keeping up with a tough job and a meagrely pay. We should not expect them to compete on commercial terms. Otherwise our citrus fruit, artichokes and strawberries, our honey and ġbejniet will soon disappear.
Maltese development policies suffer a class problem. Our elites, the wealthy and well-connected, who profit from more roads, more hangars, more hotels, more petrol stations (come to think of it: how many garages are needed on an island 17 miles long and 9 miles wide?), more office buildings and apartment blocks do not have to suffer the consequences of destruction. They can escape to a villa in Veneto, a farm in Tuscany or a pied-a-terre in London anytime. The more patriotic tweak regulations to convert an ancient tool shed in bucolic setting into a villa with swimming pool. For the elites, the day of reckoning is further away than for most of us, as they can shield themselves behind high walls and pretend that nature has not quite disappeared yet.
A much bolder and much more revolutionary approach is needed to keep our islands inhabitable. We should think in terms of a car-free island, supported by public transport, cycle routes and pedestrian priority. Our green spaces should be sacrosanct and no further encroachment on nature should be permitted. Mass tourism should be discouraged and sustainability prioritised; not in brochures and political statements, but with rigorous checks and balances and inviolable laws. We should promote development and high-rises within existing urbanisation and on brown sites, without petty nimbyism, but protect the slivers of nature we have left – for the sake of our visitors and for our own sanity. Can we do that? Perhaps not, but we have to try.
The purpose of this column is to broaden readers’ general financial knowledge and it should not be interpreted as presenting investment advice, or advice on the buying and selling of financial products.
andreas.weitzer@timesofmalta.com
Andreas Weitzer, Independent journalist based in Malta