State of the Environment Report for Malta 2002

One of the very first paragraphs of the final chapter of the report, which I am commending to everyone’s attention, says that the “institutional development” by which the Environment has been brought under my tutelage “has led to various reactions from the public”. Not a whiff of justificatory comment on the move follows. That is the ideally objective and scientific spirit in which the environmental balance sheet of our country has been correctly couched. A reader of the WWF report on the Planet (written in preparation for the UN World Summit to open in Johannesburg on the 26th August) cannot help being struck by its contrastingly apocalyptic tone: it calculates that in just 50 years time, humankind may be forced to emigrate to some other planet, if it wants to survive. Two observations suggest themselves. On the one hand, a comparison of the figures and facts in the two reports indeed show that environmentally Malta is doing much better than the world as a whole – although that is a very relative judgment. On the other hand, because the environment is just one for the whole planet, it is in our interest, as well as our duty, to do our utmost to ensure an optimal outcome at Johannesburg. It is striking that the key concept emerging as central to the earth Summit is an unfortunately somewhat debased derivative of the Maltese concept of the “common heritage of mankind” and that the absolutely vital importance for the environmental future, especially in the context of climate change, of the Oceans (to which the Maltese concept was first applied) is being universally acknowledged. The reader of the Report will also be struck by the rare occurrence of such sentences as this: “Malta is currently transposing several items of EU legislation dealing with solid waste management into national legislation” (p575). Nobody will be unhappy at that – since solid waste disposal has been perhaps our most intractable environmental problem for years. In our negotiations with the EU, we have been striving hard, on the one hand, to get the proof that, even in the environmental area, the EU respects the great ecological value of diversity and individual, historically, geographically and culturally conditioned identity. However, there can be no doubt, that membership of the European Union will be a great boon for the Maltese environment both in its individuality and in the global context. The Report is written in the language of experts who speak of the situation with independent and non-political eyes. Other authorities may not agree completely with all their statements. But the Government as a whole will certainly use it as a management tool. So too, I am sure, will all the relevant, competent authorities. [preface]peer-reviewe