From Mr Paul Butigieg

Sardinia took a giant step to save its coastline for posterity when the island’s regional assembly approved a law banning construction on 1,760 km of land near the sea.

The law is expected to scupper plans to build a huge tourist complex on the Costa Turchese on the east coast near Olbia. Successive island governments rejected the plan, which envisaged 500 hectares of villas and hotels, and moorings for 2,000 yachts.

The Costa Turchese, home to a marine nature reserve, is to be rigorously protected from all construction. The measure to protect Sardinia’s coasts was first imposed by decree two years ago, but a more carefully refined version was enacted recently.

The island’s governor, Renato Soru, billionaire founder of the Internet service provider Tiscali, who has made the preservation of the island’s exquisite environment a personal crusade, was beaming. “The government and the majority have kept faith with a commitment made in our election campaign, which for us is a fundamental point in our programme,” he said. “Now Sardinia is safe: there is a strip of coastline covering on average three kilometres from the sea where it is not possible to build anything. Sardinia’s territory will no longer be consumed.”

Despite protests from the island’s building industry, so far Mr Soru seems to have succeeded in retaining public support for his dream of hanging on to the island’s natural beauty for the next 500 years.

The new law allows construction work already underway to be completed, and reconstruction to be undertaken in existing resort areas. The Californian tycoon Tom Barrack, who owns much of the Costa Smeralda, one of Sardinia’s marine jewels, will, for instance, be allowed to rebuild in areas that are already built up, and to replace the naval shipyard with a hotel, but not to expand beyond the resort’s existing limits.

The new law brings to an end a period of anarchy on the island, when the striking down by a regional court of 13 out of 14 local development plans left a planning vacuum into which developers rushed to build new tourist facilities.

Mr Soru commented: “All that was saved in the previous decades will remain intact.

“The beauty of nature is a patrimony that can be exploited only if it is not violated. We were given the task of turning the page, and we have done so. The island’s Wild West period is over.”

Such decisive action being taken here in Malta is wishful thinking indeed! Imagine the political repercussions, locally, of such a move, with building contractors threatening to lay off thousands of people and holding the government to ransom!

Paul Buttigieg acknowledges the help of Dr Mario Tabone Vassallo in reporting this item.