A change of tune back to the environment

The Opposition Nationalist Party yesterday made a slight departure, or shall we say a detour, from its recent anti-corruption rallying cry and once again began to beat the environmental drum. This will undoubtedly be welcome news to the country’s evergrowing cadre of environmentally-minded citizens.

It is not that too much can ever be said about the very serious claims of corruption that have plagued the country in recent years, but if you sing the same song too often for too long its message begins to wane.

As such, yesterday’s unveiling of the PN’s environmental policy document with its 16 key focus areas and 171 distinct proposals is a welcome move, and it is one that should keep the government on its toes – just as any political opposition is duty- bound to do.

The two issues of corruption and environmental degradation have been the Opposition’s persistent rallying cries over the last four years. The latter ever since the Zonqor Point-American University of Malta debacle hit the headlines and the former had taken on a completely new resonance since the advent of the Panama papers scandal.

But lately not enough attention has been applied to the issue of environmental degradation, a crucial issue in terms of national importance as well as in terms of vote catching.

Allegations of corruption are many times hard to prove to a sceptical public, especially in the absence of hard proof, while environmental degradation is hard not to notice – it is right there in the public’s face and as such it is so easily discernible.

Out of those 171 proposals for the environment published yesterday, each and every one worthy in their own right, there was one standout proposal: the Opposition leader’s pledge to re-negotiate the government deal with the American University of Malta that granted the institution-in-the-making a swathe of Outside Development Land at Zonqor Point to a private Jordanian developer to build part of its campus.

This issue was, after all, the one standout cause that created so much concern, and which gave rise to the newly re-invigorated environment movement that we have today.

The government has, however, already begun to attempt to make good on what so many consider to have been an environmental sin on that picturesque stretch of the Marsascala coastline.

At the height of the American University of Malta ODZ land giveaway debacle, the government had declared its intention to create a national park in Zonqor alongside the campus. At the time, very few people believed that the government would ever make good on the pledge, until the recent publication of a legal notice creating nearly a one million square metre national park.

Originally, the Zonqor project was to award Sadeen Group, the developers behind the project, a massive 90,000 square metres of ODZ land, a size that was later trimmed down to 18,000 square me- tres, and to offset that reduction the government granted the institution a second campus at Cottonera’s Dock 1.

But in the eyes of the country’s environmentalists, that is still 18,000 square metres too many and it is clearly not enough to entirely mitigate the bad rap the government has had over the last four-odd years for its perceived lack of concern for the environment.

The government would do well to take note of what the environmentalist have been screaming about for years on end. There was a time when their numbers were negligible when it came to the grand electoral stakes, but those times are over and the environmental lobby has become a force to be reckoned with. The Opposition, with yesterday’s policy document, has shown it is fully cognisant of this state of affairs.

The environmental lobby as a whole has grown more swiftly than ever in these last four years – if in doubt just look at the public’s reaction to the multiple high rises and skyscrapers on the drawing board – and that lobby is already very clearly setting the political agenda in Malta, as has been the case in so many other countries.

The Opposition’s pledge is a valid one but it will a difficult one to honour should the area granted to the AUM already be cemented over and built up by the time the Opposition once again gains power, in 2018 or in 2023 – national park or not. And as such, only time will tell if the Opposition will be able to fully make good on that pledge.