Environment and heritage NGO Din l-Art Helwa has had a number of its proposals regarding the Strategic Plan for the Environment and Development (SPED) over the past year ignored by the Parliamentary Committee on Environment and Development Planning as well as Mepa.
Representatives told this newspaper that the NGO had last January warned against the introduction of new policies until SPED was up and running, for fears of clashing policies and that such plans have long-term implications without the umbrella of an overall strategy. This proposal, however, was ignored, with one example being the Rural Policy and Design Guidance Policy which had been relatively recently announced.
In January, the NGO had "called into serious question the decision by Mepa's Board to approve the new ODZ policy only days before a discussion on procedures governing the launch of new planning regulations in the absence of a new Strategic Plan for the Environment and Development (SPED)". This Strategy has yet to be implemented and passed through Parliament. It came to the forefront in 2010, with the Environment and Development Planning Act which will replace the Structure Plan adopted in 1992.
Letter to parliamentary committee
The letter submitted to the Parliamentary Committee on Environment and Development Planning during the same month read; "The strategy of the Structure Plan was translated into subsidiary plans and policies, including seven local plans and several supplementary planning policies. The SPED is to ensure that plans, policies and programmes issued under the Environment and Development Planning Act are holistic and comprehensive. Subsidiary plans and policies should not extend the scope of or be in conflict with the SPED".
"It follows that the new SPED should be finalised before the government embarks on major revisions to existing subsidiary plans and policies, or the formulation of new subsidiary plans and policies. Din l‐Art Helwa strongly objected to the government's ongoing initiative to hastily revise and introduce a series of important plans and policies, without carrying out the necessary background studies, before the new SPED is concluded," the letter in January read. Some of these initiatives were passed without hesitation.
"The revision and formulation of these plans and policies will have major and long‐term environmental, social and economic implications," it added.
The document is out of line with the legal requirements
The NGO also criticised the SPED plan itself in comments about the strategy made last June, arguing that it is not valid and does not fulfil the expectations of the strategic spatial plan which is required to guide development and the environment. "The document is out of line with the legal requirements for the SPED. The Environment and Development Planning Act 2010 states clearly that the Strategic Plan should set out policies and include 'an explanatory memorandum giving a reasoned justification for each of the policies and proposals contained in the plans," the NGO said during the public consultation process.
The NGO argued that "the document now issued for public consultation does not include the required policies, let alone any reasoned justification for them. Instead it only contains a list of objectives which are very similar to the objectives published in 2012 in preparation for the Strategic Plan. The 2012 document clearly stated that the objectives were only intended to 'guide the policy formulation stage of the drawing up of the SPED'. Din l‐Art Helwa is of the opinion that it is unacceptable for the same objectives to now simply be presented as the full Strategic Plan"
"The government is attempting to show that it has fulfilled its environmental obligations by presenting the document it describes as the 'SPED' for public consultation, when it has done nothing of the kind. MEPA should go back to the drawing board and publish a proper holistic strategy to regulate the sustainable development of land and sea resources as required by the Environment and Planning Development Act 2010", their comments read. The strategy itself has yet to be implemented.