Tourism projects are essential for promoting the idea that a country is aware of its natural heritage, but such projects are not easy to implement and need to take into account a number of factors before they can start operating.
Access and inclusion have become an important factor and access can be both psychological and physical. From a psychological standpoint it means that the material provided in an interpretation centre such as that at the Ħaġar Qim/Mnajdra Archaeological Park must reach as many people as possible and must be educational and attractive at the same time.
Psychological access also refers to information being presented in a form that is understandable to everybody. There are many different ways of promoting understanding including charts, graphic explanations and presentations, and multimedia in the form of electronic presentations, computer consoles, cd-roms, games and internet links. Such explanations must also cater for people with special needs and must avoid a cultural bias that may offend specific cultures.
From a physical aspect, a heritage project must provide access to everyone, including ramps for the disabled and lifts for the elderly, and inclusion has a lot to do with access. Places such as Ħaġar Qim must open their doors to those who really need to see them. If an essential part of their role is to educate, they must attract those who are not particularly well educated and not so well off. High entrance fees should be subsidised for specific sections of society such as children, students, teachers, low-income families and people with special needs.
Education is another essential factor. Many of the subjects concerned with culture, history and geography are being sidelined in our schools and as time passes, the demand for these subjects at secondary level is falling dramatically. In fact, history and geography are among the least popular subjects selected in secondary schools because they are not regarded as being necessary for the world of work. This is not good news, considering that many green jobs require a good knowledge of these subjects.
The importance of
sustainability
Tourism sustainability can be either minimalist – restricted to a small area and limited in scope – or comprehensive – pertaining to a vast area and connecting a network of activities all contributing to making the entire area sustainable. In Malta, we have neither. Politicians sometimes confuse tourism sustainability with the upgrading and cleaning a of tourist area – which is completely different and not even minimalistic, because it deals with a single parameter, namely that of improving a usually unkempt and shoddy site.
So the question to ask is whether the Ħaġar Qim/Mnajdra Archaeological Park is an attempt at minimalist sustainable tourism or just a project that needed completion to tap into important EU funding. If the latter is true, we will have to wait a long time to see another project like it.
It’s not that the Ħaġar Qim/Mnajdra Archaeological Park is not a high-quality project, but it has been advertised since at least 1990 – when Michael Refalo was the Tourism Minister who erected the first sign designating the area as an “Archaeological Park” when it was, in fact, only actually finished 20 years later!
If during this time, there had been a plan of building or upgrading a series of archaeological and historical sites and connecting them together to present a comprehensive view of Maltese archaeology and history to spread the idea across the whole country, then we would have had the start of a comprehensive and sustainable tourism project. Unfortunately, the project was finished 20 years too late, which is not the way heritage projects should be handled.
A comprehensive system would sweep across the country bringing together local councils and other local groups, the owners of small businesses and entrepreneurs, agriculturists, wine-growers, bee-keepers, historical and re-enactment societies, band clubs, ramblers – everyone who has something to offer the project, be it historical, cultural or natural.
Local Agenda 21
To develop such a system, the tourism sector must work within the framework of Local Agenda 21. This entails reducing the amount of energy and raw material consumed by the population within the sustainable tourism area; the protection of fragile ecosystems and environments and distributing the wealth generated in the area fairly between different social groups, with an emphasis on the poor and the disadvantaged.
It is also important to look at some of the principles of Agenda 21 that are applicable to the area under development. (These are found in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and include the right of people to enjoy a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.)
In our country, development is so rampant that it practically reaches every nook and cranny. Agenda 21 also states: “Development today must not undermine the development and environment needs of present and future generations”. But can we really imagine that all the building, construction and development within the ODZ will provide a nicer and cleaner Malta for our children? Maybe this is the reason why the government talks a lot about sustainability, but stays clear of Agenda 21.
Another point of Local Agenda 21 states: “In order to achieve sustainable development, environmental protection will constitute an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation from it”. This should have been the role of Mepa. Unfortunately, things turned out to be slightly different, with the Planning Authority’s obvious bias in favour of development that basically relegated environmental protection to a secondary level of importance.
A further point concerns the participation of concerned citizens in Environmental issues. This should be done with the government’s full participation involving the facilitation and encouragement of public awareness and participation by making environmental information widely available.
In our country, Mepa is plagued with biased Environment Impact Assessments, construction magnates who cannot take no for an answer and politicians who use the Authority as a form of permit-dispensing machine. How can anyone expect Mepa to function smoothly?
So many of Local Agenda 21’s requirements are not satisfied and this cripples the ability of our country to pursue some form of meaningful sustainability. As I have said before, sustainable tourism requires the tourism sector to grow, while taking into consideration the environmental carrying capacity and its main economic, social and cultural assets. These have to be scrutinized and protected as they attract tourists to our country.
These steps may seem to be sequential when the entire strategy is really a dynamic system with loops connecting all the steps together and every step requires the collection of data and information about the environment, socio-economic trends and the impact of tourism development on the destination. Eventually, a picture emerges about the most sustainable scenario of the tourism destination and this is used to develop a Strategic Plan for Sustainable Tourism based on several indicators. Such jobs should be performed by trained personnel within Mepa and the MTA.
However, the government, namely the Minister/Parliamentary Secretary, must evaluate the sustainability of tourism activities that must include actions involving all levels such as the involvement and participation of the stakeholders, the improvement of local operators’ standards including quality of services and environment performances; the assessment of the tourism destinations carrying capacity; the implementation of environmental management systems, certification schemes and eco-labelling in the public and private tourism sectors, the recovery of environmental and landscape quality of the destination, the establishment of overall policy goals and tourism development strategy integrated in territorial development plans and finally, monitoring of the outcomes of the Strategic Plan and controlling them by means of the pre-established indicators during the carrying capacity evaluation.
This is basically the way to go about implementing a comprehensive sustainable tourism plan. It also shows how out-of-depth the government is regarding the implementation of sustainable tourism.
The main problems hindering the government are the lack of standards and the lack of coordinated governance. Authorities such as Mepa, MTA and MRA act more like feudal states, carefully protecting their “independence” from one another, and led by government-appointed vassals who, most of the time, are more interested in consolidating their political power, their “kingdom” and their sponsors (the government) than working for the benefit of the entire country as they should be doing.