The title of this piece is borrowed from the title of a video clip about Nauru, which is tagged as “the country which ate itself”. The floundering fortunes of a small island in the Pacific may seem to be removed from our reality but the four-minute video about Nauru shows some ominous parallels.
Like Malta, Nauru is tiny, spanning 22 kilometres. It was rich in phosphates, which was mined mercilessly and unsustainably from the ground.
Following Nauru’s acquisition of independence, it continued mining and exporting phosphates and its fortunes skyrocketed. In 1974, it had the second highest GDP per capita in the world – three times higher than that of the United States. A super generous welfare system was set up, consumerism took off and all seemed to be going swimmingly.
Then the phosphate deposits ran out. Up to 80 per cent of the land cover had been destroyed because of the mining. Some 40 per cent of the marine animals around the island had been killed.
Since much of the island looked like an industrial wasteland, it couldn’t fall back on alternative sources of revenue such as tourism. The real estate investments that the government had made in anticipation of such a crisis were not successful.
The residents on the island had been weaned on the typically rich diets of a hyper-consumeristic society and the majority were obese.
Strapped for cash, the island turned to dodgy sources of revenue – money laundering, selling passports and even acting as a holding pen or detention centre for refugees (some of whom preferred to stay on board a ship rather than land on the ravaged wasteland they could see).
That, in a nutshell, is how Nauru earned the nickname of “the country which ate itself”.
Now some people will dismiss Nauru’s story out of hand. They’ll claim that something similar couldn’t happen here. But the parallels are outstandingly similar.
Like Nauru, our natural resources are being used up. While Nauru was rich in phosphates, here, we have quarries that plunder stone resources incessantly and which are nearly never rehabilitated. Many operate illegally and enforcement is non-existent.
Our landscape, cultural heritage, natural beauty and charm are being ruined as the cementification of Malta goes on apace- Claire Bonello
Our other resources, the landscape, cultural heritage, natural beauty and charm, are being ruined as the cementification of Malta goes on apace.
The brochures and expensive media campaigns conducted by the tourism authorities are mostly made up of selective, edited snapshots of the still-beautiful corners dotted around the Maltese islands.
But beyond the frame there is a hot, ugly mess of chaos and construction.
Soon, even the idyllic spots will be engulfed in the crassness that characterises the rest of the island. Tourists will desert Malta then. I suspect that they are already making their choices now.
Clayton Bartolo, the tourism minister, has had to resort to paying tourists to come here. It seems that every time I come across media reports about him these days, he’s either inaugurating a car park or dishing out more vouchers to any type of tourist who would come to Malta.
Incidentally, there is nothing more off-putting than the scent of desperation, putting out that begging bowl for visitors, instead of having a country that visitors consider to be a worthy destination.
Most of our ministers, wholly taken up with selfie opportunities and the obligatory posting of the same on social media, refuse to recognise the fact that the country should have diversified the type of industry or investment spheres it promotes.
They are in thrall to the construction industry, intent on quoting the fallacy that it is the motor of the economy, refusing to concede the fact that the latest statistics published by the National Audit Office have put paid to that particular fallacy.
The construction sector is more of a bit player than a colossus of industry. It is hugely subsidised by the government in a number of ways which look suspiciously like state aid.
And the oft-quoted “multiplier effect” is another fiction, regularly touted by those who sail on cheap labour of migrants and extravagant and discriminatory government largesse.
And so, as our ministers pose for selfies, cosy up to the development lobby, appoint more of their incompetent friends as persons of trust sucking off the public teat, we careen towards a fate similar to that of Narau, complete with the flirtation with money-laundering and selling passports with little oversight and the hyper- consumeristic culture.
It’s chilling to think that, way back in 1974, Narau was second “best in the world” insofar as GDP was concerned.