Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1464865
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 17 APRIL 2022 OPINION 10 Raphael Vassallo OPINION We are not 'derogating' from the Birds Directive. We're just breaking it, that's all IT'S not very often that I have high hopes for newly-appointed Environment Ministers… and let's face it: that's probably just as well, too. (To quote a wise old friend of mine: 'Blessed is he who expects nothing; for he shall not be disappointed!') But, well, let's just say that I made the tragic mistake of al- lowing myself the luxury of 'expectation', this time round. When I first heard that Robert Abela had stripped Aaron Far- rugia of the environment port- folio, and entrusted it to Miriam Dalli instead… I actually took that as a positive sign, myself. For a fleeting moment, it even seemed as though the Labour government intended to finally deliver on that (oh, so poign- ant!) 2013 campaign promise: "So the environment gets the protection it truly deserves". And not, in case you're won- dering, because of any specific qualities Miriam Dalli herself might possess, that make her more qualified for the role than anyone else. (Though there is a bit of that, too: the former MEP was, after all, chosen by the Eu- ropean Socialists to spearhead the so-called 'Green Deal'…) No, my optimism – misplaced though it turned out to be - was built on two main factors, at the end of the day. The first takes the form of Robert Abela's other bold choice: which was to conjoin the Environment and Energy portfolios into a single 'super-ministry'. At a glance this seems to break with a decades-old tradition, whereby the environment was always simply lumped together with any old ministry deemed 'unimportant' enough for such a patently useless, and unwant- ed, portfolio. (Back in the early 1990s, for instance, it was usu- ally relegated to a sub-section of the 'Ministry for Youth, Culture and Sports'.) So by linking it to what is ar- guably the single most critical sector, for any government – energy, no less: an issue so vital, that I wouldn't even be able to write this article without it – Abela seemed to making a pow- erful statement. If nothing else, the new configuration suggest- ed that this government really would attach as much impor- tance to Malta's environmental concerns, as it does to our na- tional energy requirements (as, indeed, was all along implied by that earlier slogan). Besides, the merger makes eminent sense for a host of oth- er reasons. Energy and Environ- ment are, after all, intimately related anyway. Our ability (or rather, inability) to meet our Climate Change targets, hinges exclusively on the need to re- duce our dependence on fossil fuels; and on top of that, some of Malta's more pressing envi- ronmental problems today – in- cluding air pollution, respirato- ry diseases, etc. - arise directly from the combustion of fossil fuels in our cars. And this brings us to the sec- ond factor: which does, admit- tedly, concern the actual choice of minister to replace Aaron Farrugia. No offence to the latter, of course (who, to be fair, wasn't even the worst specimen of En- vironment Minister we've ev- er had.) But, at the time of his appointment in 2020, Aaron Farrugia was something of an unknown quantity, in local pol- itics: one of the Labour Party's newer, less familiar faces, who had previously served only in such invisible roles as 'Parlia- mentary Secretary for European Funds and Social Dialogue'. You can't exactly say the same for Miriam Dalli though, can you? Leaving aside that she is (second only to Roberta Met- sola) far and away the most widely recognisable face in Mal- tese politics, both locally and abroad; she is also probably the most experienced, and capable, of all the options Robert Abela actually had at his disposal. (It wasn't that long ago that her name was being bandied about as a possible future Labour Par- ty leader, for instance). All things considered, then: I don't it was altogether unrea- sonable of me to assume that Miriam Dalli's credentials in the environmental department – coupled with her long expe- rience in European politics – would have rubbed off on her, at least a tiny bit (enough, for instance, for her to understand that an Environment Minister's job is actually to 'protect the en- vironment' … and NOT to facil- itate its continued destruction, by any means necessary, for purely political reasons.)… But, oh well… it was a nice il- lusion, while it actually lasted: in other words, for the grand total of one, measly little week. As it turns out, Dalli's first-ev- er action as Environment Min- ister – on April 8: just 10 days after her appointment - was to announce yet another 'deroga- tion' from the European Wild Birds Directive: this time, to permit the hunting of an endan- gered species (the turtle-dove) during its breeding season. Now: obviously, I won't bore you with all the reasons why I personally think this is a very, VERY bad idea. I've written about it often enough in the past: so all I'll say for now is that Spring hunting – for any species – is, by its very defini- tion, 'unsustainable' at the best of times… … but when the species we are talking about is also listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as 'vulnerable' (especially in Eu- rope, where turtle-dove popula- tions have been plummeting for years)… … and when, in its own justifi- cation for the Red-List catego- ry, the IUCN itself declares that the turtle-dove has "undergone rapid declines in much of its Eu- ropean range […] Declines are thought to be driven by a num- ber of factors including loss of foraging and nesting sites as well as disease and HUNTING ALONG ITS MIGRATION ROUTES (!!!)"… Sorry, but that puts a whole different perspective on things. It is no longer merely a ques- tion of the 'sustainability', or What we are looking at now is an actual, full-blown, environmental emergency. There is, at the end of it all, a bird species that is threatened with possible extinction, no less