The Bill for Sustainable Development is currently before Parliament. It has rightly been criticised for being deficient in a number of key respects. This is a pity as the Sustainability Bill, when enacted, must interlock with the National Environment Policy, the quality of which has rightly led to plaudits for the government.

Since both the National Environment Policy and the Sustainability Bill have come out of the same ministerial stable, one has to conclude that Minister Mario de Marco must have come under Cabinet pressure to trim ambitions and lower expectations. If the government’s commitment to sustainable development is not to be seen as less than wholehearted, however, key parts of the Bill must be drastically amended.

Sustainable development is concerned with achieving economic growth in the form of higher living standards, while protecting and enhancing the environment. This is not just for the sake of having a better environment, but because a damaged environment will sooner or later hold back economic growth and lower the quality of life of our people. This indeed has been the story of Malta’s development over the last 50 years or so. The environmental penalty for economic growth has been a heavy one.

More important than formal definitions, however, are the key objectives that should underpin Malta’s sustainable development. It is these objectives which should provide the vision for the Sustainability Bill, but which appear nowhere in the present draft.

There should be three interlocking objectives. First, despite the debt crisis in the eurozone, our objective should still be to maintain high and stable levels of economic growth and employment. For our country to prosper, we need to be competitive and entrepreneurial to be able to weather the storms that lie ahead.

Secondly, we want affordable social progress that recognises the needs of everyone.

Thirdly, we need effective protection of the environment. This means, as ably set out in the National Environment Policy, acting to protect human health and safety from hazards, such as air or water pollution and being prudent about the use of our meagre natural resources like water and land.

The achievement of these three objectives calls for an ambitious and workable National Plan for Sustainable Development. Yet, what do we find is the purpose of the Bill now before Parliament? It is first, and I paraphrase, “to create a frame-work through which sustainable development is to be main-streamed (sic) across government”. And secondly, it is “to raise awareness of the principles [of sustainable development] in the private sector and civil society”. For those not familiar with the ugly jargon, to “main-stream” is to make all government ministries take full account of an issue – in this case, sustainability – in all their policies and actions. With such limited and unambitious objectives, Malta could not be further removed from drawing up a National Plan for Sustainable Development if it tried.

On the contrary, a National Plan for Sustainable Development should be the central feature of such an Act. The Bill currently speaks of the “Competent Authority” “ensuring the development and implementation of Malta’s sustainability strategy” and ensuring that the “provisions of the strategy are implemented in a timely manner”, but shies clear of committing itself to a National Plan for Sustainable Development. Otherwise how can Parliament hold the government to account unless there is a properly targeted plan on which to base consideration? It should be the prime purpose of the Sustainability Bill, and it is currently notable by its absence.

The superstructure to support the narrow and restricted vision of the Bill is equally inadequate. The “Competent Authority” for ensuring the implementation of the aims just set out is the Office of the Prime Minister. But who in the OPM will be responsible for this is left unclear. I shall return to this issue later.

Beneath the Competent Authority, the Bill envisages “Sustainable Development Coordinators” and “Focal Points” in every ministry or department as part of the “main-streaming” that is being promised. Then there is a “Sustainable Development Network” “to promote sustainable development in Malta”, as well as a “Guardian of Future Generations” “to safeguard intergenerational and intragenerational sustainable development”. The former is a talking shop and the latter, a committee, has no authority or teeth with which to safeguard sustainable development for future generations. It can only “direct the focus of the Competent Authority” to any shortcomings.

This is a sorry apology of a Bill on a crucially important area of government business, probably the greatest test of the machinery of government since Malta joined the EU. It is as if the government was determined simply to pay lip service to this issue, rather than to tackle it seriously. This is a great pity as it undermines the government’s otherwise most commendable efforts to confront the environmental deficit of which the Prime Minister had spoken so passionately in the run-up to the last election. The progress which has been made in Mepa and the other regulatory authorities has, on the whole, been outstanding. Mepa has been transformed by good leadership and less political interference.

The National Environment Policy, which has just been published, is a first class piece of work with more than the vestiges of a workable eight-year plan. It has a vision of what needs to be done and how to do it. Most importantly, it makes it clear that ‘joined-up government’ is vital to success and that you do not need to pass a Bill simply to “mainstream” work in government in order to achieve results. You only need to exercise the political will to make it happen.

Why then has the government drawn up this inadequate piece of legislation? I was a member of the National Commission for Sustainable Development, which, as part of its remit, produced a very good National Plan for Sustainable Development, launched with great fanfare, as these things always are, by the Prime Minister in April 2006. Since then, the issue has languished. For years the Cabinet failed either to endorse it or to provide the minimal manpower resources necessary to coordinate it and drive it forward. It was allowed to wither on the vine and the National Commission for Sustainable Development, which, again, had been launched with great fanfare in 2002, was placed in suspended animation to be only partially replaced under this Bill by, would one believe it, a “Sustainable Development Network”.

The principles of sustainable development need to be placed at the centre of government policy. To that extent, the Bill’s reference to “mainstreaming” sustainable development throughout government is correct and worthy. But that is not the fundamental issue. The cardinal factor is the need for a vibrant and workable sustainability plan to be created. For the implementation of such a plan you need one named individual – a “Commissioner for Sustainable Development” reporting directly to the Prime Minister, with the authority, power and human resources to drive it forward.

There has to be the determination and the political will to convert a strategy for sustainable development into a dynamic action plan – a National Plan for Sustainable Development. Sadly, the Bill before Parliament in its current form will not achieve this.