Scratching around for a topic on this island, obsessed with whether we should introduce divorce or not, was not easy. Hopefully, we shall have moved on this week, but somehow I doubt it.

I found an interesting titbit on women on Foreign Policy online, which made me think that despite us Maltese kidding ourselves that we live in a modern democratic society, we do share some idiosyncrasies with Saudi Arabia.

Unfortunately, we don’t have their oil, hence their money, but the scary tactics of their fundamentalists using God reverberated. A Saudi cleric, Shaykh Abd-al-Rahman al-Barrak, came up with this gem recently, “God says women drivers are evil and deserve to die”.

A campaign by Saudi women claiming the right to drive (in the only country in the world that forbids women to drive) is currently underway. Manal al-Sharif, one of the organisers of the movement, was arrested by Saudi authorities last Sunday after twice filming herself driving a car in her hometown of Dammam and posting the videos on YouTube, reported Cameron Abadi in “Hands off the Wheel”.

Besides the arrest, the establishment is hitting back with its own campaign in its national media with interviews with women who proclaimed, “Driving is a hassle”. One slogan our anti divorce campaigners did not come up with, “Divorce is a hassle” might have had some appeal to some of our women.

Well, what do you know, being an independent individual with full rights has its drawbacks. “When I travel to a country where I can drive,” said Zaina al-Salem, a 29-year-old banker, “I’m usually burdened with having to park my car and walk all the way to the store.”

There you have it fellow females, if you don’t want the hassle of driving, having to find a parking space and walking all the way to the store, move to Saudi.

You will live like a princess and be chauffeured everywhere.

However, it will be more like the lifestyle of a medieval princess. Using an extremist Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, according to which God forbids any mixed-gender mingling outside the family, al-Barrak threatened “What they are intending to do is forbidden and they thus become the keys to evil in this country,” adding that giving women the freedom to move around on their own would be to tempt God’s wrath. He predicted the activists would be struck dead: “They will die, God willing, and will not enjoy this.”

But as a commentator rightly pointed out, surely “they already are mingling with strange men when they have some chauffeur driving them around to begin with. I wouldn’t be remotely surprised if the vast majority of cases of adultery within Saudi Arabia involve women and their drivers.”

Another referred to a Harry Enfield hilarious sketch, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39qdhbkTko4, which still has reverberations, despite being a parody of the 1940s.

Our fundamentalists have not been as outrageous as al-Barrak. We have not been told that if we vote for divorce we “deserve to die” but we have been told ad nauseum that “God does not want it” and “the keys to evil in this country” does resonate.

It has been drummed in that we shall be ‘labelled’ as having gone against God and Jesus, by our ‘Christian brethren’ and be somehow stigmatised if we voted “Yes” yesterday.

Besides, as I opined last week, in a campaign chock-full of threats and name calling, the “No” campaign targeted women and used all kinds of emotional tactics to scare them away from voting for divorce.

From: “Marriage with divorce will stay valid until the woman’s size grows beyond 10” (A real own goal because it depicts marriage as shallow and based on the woman’s waistline rather than a union based on love and respect) to “Children are the ones to suffer most by divorce”, as though they do not suffer most anyway in any bad marriage or partnership, and “Divorce spells the end to maintenance”.

Well, we shall know soon enough if the babaw tactics worked. Moving on, I received a press release from the Sliema Residents Association, Flimkien ghal Ambjent Ahjar, NatureTrust Malta and BirdLife Malta calling on the authorities to schedule the entirety of the estate gardens of Villa Bonici in Sliema.

While questioning how the gardens of Villa Bonici were mysteriously changed from an Urban Conservation Area to one with ‘unspecified heights’? The NGOs are calling on government “not to miss this unique opportunity to purchase the last remaining large green space in the Sliema/Gzira area, and preserve it as a nature park, as it is an important habitat to a wide range of biodiversity including the western whip snake (serp iswed), lizards and geckos, migrant birds such as herons, falcons, bee-eaters and swifts, as well as resident birds. “The site also houses a colony of bats, which makes it automatically eligible for protection under Schedule III of Legal Notice 311 − Flora, Fauna and Natural Habitats Protection Regulations, 2006”, said the release.

The NGOs are claiming that although the authorities have scheduled part of the garden for its heritage features, they are failing to protect and have ignored the environmental, architectural heritage and ecosystem benefits provided by the rest of the green space.

They are insisting that failure to schedule this lower half will lead to rampant over-development of the site with all the implications of additional traffic, loss of biodiversity and of water.

And that lack of scheduling of the lower half of the garden shows that the authorities’ action to protect our environment and biodiversity falls far short of their claims of environmental care.

The NGOs are calling on the authorities to schedule the whole garden, “thus protecting Sliema’s green lung from future inappropriate development for the benefit of future generations”.

I actually overlooked this particular garden until very recently. The construction of a new block of apartments now blocks it almost completely and when the building is finished it will not only entirely block it, but will also partly hide the only other bit of green left on Manoel Island, which also will eventually disappear.

As you see, I do have personal experience of how any trace of nature is being eradicated. I find the view of greenery not only relaxing, but also appreciate the other environmental issues, including protecting natural habitats, connected with making urban living less stressful.

I was therefore also interested in reading an article by Anne Zammit in The Sunday Times, which carried the catch phrase “Nature can still surprise us” that was used at a conference on sustainable development and the built environment as part of the 53rd meeting of the European Council of Civil Engineers held in Malta earlier this month.

Unfortunately, though, no examples of nature surprising us surfaced and there were certainly no surprises about what is being done about sustainability in the building sector.

I read that Alex Torpiano, the dean of the university’s Faculty for the Built Environment, noted that architects and engineers are getting interested in sustainability and disciplines, which marry spatial planning with infrastructure.

About time. We need more than interest. We need them (architects and engineers) to start implementing what they have been blabbing about while we are drowning in unsustainability.

Torpiano also argued that the role of the structural or civil engineer had to change in order to meet new challenges related to our energy and water resources. Wow, change is needed to face new challenges. Revealing stuff!

University lecturer Ruben Paul Borg followed up on the dean’s reference to “talking across the architect/engineer divide”, by stressing “the importance of networking across institutes to adopt a sustainable approach”.

Well is that one of the surprises? Architects and engineers need to communicate to take on board a sustainable approach. “A sense of urgency”, needed to be adopted by the building sector, said Asko Sarja, from the Finnish consulting firm Innokas.

“We can save really big amounts of energy in buildings. The costs are lower and returns are higher than in most other sectors,” he advised, adding that the knowledge exists. So why on earth are the relevant authorities not doing anything about ensuring such measures are taken?

Interestingly, Mario Fsadni from the university’s Institute of Sustainable Energy, referring specifically to penthouses, predicted that sooner or later building regulations had to be enforced.

Ah, so another surprise? Building regulations are not being enforced! Maybe it is because as hydrologist Marco Cremona pointed out there is “Ambiguity over which authority is responsible for enforcing the law”.

He also noted that the neglect to collect rainwater in households was reflected on a larger scale with abandoned reservoirs, such as the one at the airport.

So no revelations let alone anything amazing and certainly no indication of ‘nature surprising us’ at the “Sustainability for architects and engineers” meeting, but I did find out that old ceiling fans and 1960s chandeliers are in demand.

[email protected]