Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1546553
11 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 13 SEPTEMBER 2026 OPINION of sacrifice zones longing? What happens when somebody has a job but cannot afford a decent home? What happens when an older person lives surrounded by people but knows nobody? What happens when young people remain in their parents' homes because independent living has be- come economically impossible? What happens when public space becomes ever more com- mercialised and everyday social life needs money to be part of? These are not adverse effects. They are part of the equation of development. And there is another danger: the normalisa- tion of sacrifice. Once we accept that one place can be sacrificed for develop- ment it becomes easier to sac- rifice another. If one shore has been compromised, the next is easier to compromise. If one historic site is to be treated as a negotiable commodity, so too can the next one. Conse- quentially, sacrifice becomes a philosophy of planning, not an exception. This is where our institutions are important. The Planning Authority cannot be simply an administrative machine for processing development. Envi- ronmental regulation must not become a ritual, where damage is legitimised, not prevented. Nor should public participation become a box to tick after the fundamental decisions have al- ready been made. The willingness to say no We need institutions willing to say no, even when that is po- litically inconvenient, econom- ically unpopular or opposed by powerful interests. But to do that you need; strong policies, good leaders, impenetrable models of governance, sepa- ration of the administration from the appointment of these public servants, and a funding stream which is not dependant on the whims of the state. Because sacrifice zones are, ultimately, about power. Who has the power to define what counts as progress? Who has the power to decide which landscape matters and which does not? Whose voice is heard in planning decisions and who is expected to simply live with the consequences? And there is a political temp- tation here as well. Develop- ment is visible, a sign of action and economic success, but the damage is usually slower, more spread out and harder to show. The loss of landscape does not come out nicely in GDP statis- tics. Nor does loneliness and the loss of community. The anxiety of not being able to af- ford a home is not visible. The real question is whether we are ready to build a country where some places, communi- ties and people are permanent- ly expected to carry the burden of everyone else's prosperity. Maybe this is the conversation Malta needs to have right now or possibly should have had 15 years ago. A country cannot eat up its own physical and social foundations and still call it pro- gress. If everything is a sacri- fice zone, then eventually there is nothing we are unwilling to sacrifice. Poverty becomes a sacrifice zone when we decide that some people will just have to suffer so the economy can keep growing. When community is seen as sentimental rather than social infrastructure, loneliness be- comes a sacrifice zone. Exclusion becomes a sacrifice zone when some people are told that Malta's prosperity is available to them only as work- ers, consumers or tenants, but not as citizens with an equal claim to space, dignity and be- longing. This is why you cannot detach the environmental debate from the social one. A field is not just a field. It could be a playground, a walkway, a meeting place, a place to be immersed in nature, a routine for an elder. A coast is more than a development opportunity. A public garden is not just an amenity. Places create social relation- ships. Destroy the places and eventually you weaken the rela- tionships. And that is precisely why the debate on planning in Malta has become so impor- tant. Our institutions are meant to mediate between private de- velopment interest and public interest. Yet for many it is be- coming increasingly difficult to view Malta's development trajectory without questioning whether the balance has shifted too much in favour of landown- ers and developers. The institutional system re- peatedly creates the perception that the development begins with the assumption of entitle- ment, while the public interest begins with the burden of ob- jection. Environmental regu- lation suffers from the same problem. When environmen- tal protection becomes a dis- cussion of how much damage is acceptable, instead of what should be protected, public confidence inevitably suffers. We are moving in a very strange form of prosperity—a country that becomes richer for some, while more and more of its people feel they have less and less of a place in it. We are moving in a very strange form of prosperity—a country that becomes richer for some, while more and more of its people feel they have less and less of a place in it