Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/797847
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 12 MARCH 2017 15 ing against smaller parties. I know it will open up another Pandora's Box; but I see no other way to end the dependence on private com- mercial interests." One of the people who disagrees is Finance Minister Edward Scicluna, who also argues – and to be fair, our own polls bear him out – that the taxpayer would never accept that kind of arrangement... "I think, with the situation as it is today, the taxpayer is still indirect- ly paying the parties. When you have these vested interests, it is al- ways ultimately the taxpayer who foots the bill. What I'm suggesting is to be more forthright about it: to make the system accountable, so that people know exactly how they are financing the parties... and not get to know about it only through corruption scandals. So I don't agree with the finance minister. I think the only way to stamp out this network of vested interests is to create a chasm between political parties and private businesses..." All the same, the environment is a vast topic: and closing party fi- nancing loopholes can hardly be expected to solve all issues. Earlier, Deidun mentioned a 'death by a thousand blows'. How much of this 'death' is being caused by the large projects we associate with the above-mentioned 'political-private partnerships'... and how much by our own daily activities as ordinary citizens? Deidun admits that his pessimism arises partly from the latter con- sideration. "For me, one of the top priorities for the environment should be ODZ. We have a limited amount of undeveloped space, and it is forever decreasing. I divide applicants for ODZ permit into two categories... the large devel- opers, of whom there are around 10 or 20 – everyone knows who they are, they've become house- hold names – and John Citizen. Let's take the first: that there is a connection with party financing is clear. The electoral promises are there for all to see. To mention but one example of how it impacts the environment: high-rise. People ask me, what is the environmental im- pact of towers in Mriehel... isn't it a degraded area anyway? But if you delve deeper, you realise that there has to be a new traffic junction. Where will they put it? In the ODZ area across the road. This did not come out in the public hearing..." But it is the second category that may prove more insidious in the long term. "The vast majority of ODZ applications in this country, and most of the development that is going on in green areas as we speak, are done by ordinary citi- zens. Last year alone, there were 750 permits granted for ODZ de- velopments. That's no joke..." Those permits in turn represent only an estimated 5% of the total number of development applica- tions – in any area – submitted in 2015. "We must bear in mind that many of the applications would be for very minor things: internal al- terations in a development zone, for instance. But still, 750 ODZ permits were granted last year. The Environment and Resources Authority (ERA) objected to a large number of these permits; and its advice was overturned in 70% of cases. This alone should give an idea of the situation: the ERA represents the environmental con- science, as it were, of the planning regime..." Paradoxically, Deidun argues that smaller developments may actu- ally pose the bigger problem. "The larger developers can be moni- tored... they are few in number. The real problem is the much larger number of smaller applica- tions that are not immediately vis- ible. And this has an effect on how parties approach the problem. One example is the PN's environ- mental policy document. On the whole, it is a good initiative, but it has one major flaw. I am sure they thought about it; perhaps they were not courageous enough to include a reference, or perhaps someone took it out. But it only tackles the large ODZ develop- ments. Only those go through the additional level of checks and bal- ances proposed by the PN: that is, approval by a two-thirds parlia- mentary majority. That applies to Zonqor, all the high-rise develop- ments... but you're not going to realistically go to parliament with 750 small ODZ cases..." Yet these collectively cover a comparable, if not larger, foot- print than the so-called 'mega- projects'. "We're all turning the big guns onto these big develop- ments – myself included, mind you, I'm not defending them – and rightly so; but we're not look- ing at the complete picture. The reality is that collectively, we as Maltese citizens would not hesi- tate to make money out of ODZ land, given the opportunity... in 2006, for instance, after the de- velopment boundaries were in- creased, MEPA received nearly 7,000 requests – 99% from ordi- nary citizens – to have their land included in the new zones..." This pre-empts a question I was going to ask anyway. Doesn't this also mean that our collective angst over environmental issues – Dwejra being a case in point – is only skin-deep? "Our environmental credentials as a nation... well, they're not there, really. But it's not necessarily be- cause we're 'bad people'. This comes from our lack of under- standing of what the environment is. Appreciation of the environ- ment arises from an understand- ing of how it works. What is the role of a gecko or a lizard? Unless you know its role, you can't appre- ciate its importance in an ecosys- tem. I've heard even politicians say that, 'U iva, what are four lizards? Do you think we're going to stop a permit because of four lizards?'..." Interview The collapse of the Azure Window might have impacted Malta like a cataclysm... but environmentalist ALAN DEIDUN argues that our natural heritage has more to fear from the gradual impact of smaller, more insidious threats thousand blows' PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS MANGION