The long-awaited reform of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority is, finally, scheduled to see the light of day this week – welcome news, although the reform had been promised by the end of last year. Six months late, however, is certainly better than never and, of course, electoral pledges are, at the end of the day, what they are.

One thing is for certain, now is not the time for a half-baked reform. Now is the time to well and truly take the bull that is Mepa by the horns.

Now is the time to take the steps needed to not only control the ongoing devastation of the country’s environment and the ruinous effect on the population’s current quality of life – but we must also act for posterity and for Malta’s future generations, whose own quality of life will depend very much on the actions and decisions we take today.

Faced with rampant development – past, present and future – of the little land area the country has left, a serious rethink and a bolstering of all the areas under Mepa’s remit are utter necessities.

When the Prime Minister, in March 2008, substituted finance for environment as the area under the OPM’s wing, he must have truly thought he was putting himself in the hot seat, and that he was leaving a stable and smooth sailing economy that had just joined the euro zone in the capable hands of the new finance minister, formerly his parliamentary secretary for finance.

But while the state of the country’s environment has maintained its somewhat sorry status quo, what transpired was unexpected, with the area of finance having taken a severe beating in the ensuing time frame, thanks to the trickle down effects of the global financial crisis and the recession following in its wake.

Last year’s Cabinet reshuffle, in addition to adding environment, and Mepa, to the OPM’s portfolio, created two new parliamentary secretariats under the OPM – one for tourism and another effectively for local councils.

The merging of environment, tourism and local councils under the OPM umbrella was intended to foster the cross fertilisation of ideas and inputs, while at the same time creating synergies between the three areas which, in an ideal scenario, could accomplish significant feats if they were to act in concerted unison.

The state of the environment is intrinsically linked to tourism, and local councils have a much larger role to play in environmental management, in attracting tourism to their localities by focusing on and promoting their own localities to entice tourists to visit and leave their tourism euros at the localities’ businesses.

Whether any such initiatives have got off the ground and whether they are yielding fruit is questionable, and the question of whether they will in the future lies squarely on the OPM’s doorstep.

It had also been proposed that local councils would take on part of Mepa’s remit, in terms of issuing permits such as those for minor alterations and perhaps also in terms of certain enforcement duties. The idea would be on the one hand to reduce Mepa’s workload so it would be able to concentrate on more pressing matters, the abundance of which is never short, while at the same time decentralising and localising the system to a certain extent. No such measure came out of the recent local council reform; perhaps something along such lines will be announced next week.

Another suggestion that drew applause in the 2008 electoral campaign was the Prime Minister’s assertion that the Mepa reform would lead to a new modus operandi when it comes to illegal developments.

The new policy, it was pledged, would be for Mepa to tear down illegal structures and ask questions later – effectively reversing today’s enforcement practices, in which illegal developments sprouting up remain where they are until years of legal proceedings are concluded. The new school of thought, or so we have been told, will advocate first demolishing and then bringing the perpetrators to court.

Through the reform, we were told, Mepa would become more efficient and accountable, irregular practices would be stamped out and the inconsistency of decisions taken by the authority would also be remedied – all in line with the overriding ideas of increasing Mepa’s efficiency, transparency, consistency in decisions and enforcement.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as the adage goes, and that pudding will undoubtedly be colourfully served up, heartily eaten and carefully digested this week.