The government has embarked on a consultation exercise to guide the formulation of a Strategic Plan for Environment and Development (SPED for short). The aim of SPED will be “to provide a strategic spatial policy framework for environment and development up to 2020..... making proposals for the future spatial distribution of the environment on land and sea.”

I have recently been researching the history of Malta’s environmental and spatial planning over the last 50 years for a talk I am giving at an international conference later this year. It is a sorry story of greed, exploitation, abuse, misgovernance and political ineptitude. When you consider that for the first 30 years, between 1962 and 1992 - when the then Minister, Michael Falzon, appalled by the tangled planning system he had inherited, introduced the first Development Planning Act and the current Structure Plan - Malta had absolutely no planning laws to speak of, you may agree that my description lies not far from the truth. Malta owes a great debt to Michael Falzon.

Until 1992, Malta’s construction development was like something out of the Wild West with government ministers treating land as though it were a personal fiefdom, there to distribute as political favours, or sometimes even to line their own pockets. And the next 20 years since 1992 have also been rocky, with the five-year period leading up to the election in 2008 being shockingly mismanaged by the then Minister for the Environment, George Pullicino. Who can forgive the totally unnecessary “rationalisation,” actually an expansion, of the building development zones in 2006?

The proposals in the SPED suffer from one major deficiency. They take scant account of Malta’s abysmal planning history of the last five decades. To compound the error, they seem to assume that Malta’s future spatial planning is simply to be a continuum of the current Structure Plan, albeit tempered by a nod in the direction of “sustainable development” and some form of acknowledgement of other government “national policies”.

Unless a plan of this nature acknowledges as its start-point the rampant past over-development, and seeks explicitly to reverse or to slow it down, it risks perpetuating the same mistakes of the last 50 years. The rosy “Vision” set out for the SPED in this document will be unattainable unless a new spatial plan for Malta adopts a radically different approach.

The analysis contained in the document simply does not square up with the all-important Strategic Objectives which are its overriding purpose.

The analysis itself is balanced, objective and accurate and I quote the following directly from the document. There is an over-supply of land for housing. The land required for future industrial development up to 2020 can be met by using vacant land within the designated industrial areas. There is an over-supply of “floor-space” for the market services sector. Malta’s biodiversity continues to be threatened by land development, over-exploitation and climate change. Limestone has been over-exploited. The current situation is unsustainable. Freshwater resources are threatened by over-abstraction, pollution from nitrates, lack of rain-water harvesting and poor infrastructure. Malta’s built heritage is under threat from demolition, inappropriate design and use of new and restored buildings which undermine street character. The cultural landscape is threatened by the extent of the built up area, industrial and coastal development, taller buildings and urban fringes that obstruct views of historic centres, increased vehicular access, poor standards of design and workmanship and lack of maintenance.

And so the analysis goes on in this vein in all its honest, gory detail.

In the face of such overwhelming evidence, it would be logical to assume that the “Strategic Plan” which emerged through the Strategic Objectives lying at the heart of the SPED, would reflect the need for future action to correct these past deficiencies. But instead, the Thematic Objectives as they are called, are bland and anaemic and do not correspond to the evidence so starkly described in the analysis. Let me be clear. It is not so much that the Thematic Objectives are wrong – they are for the most part fine so far as they go - merely that in each case – there are 24 of them – the means by which the Objectives are to be achieved are insufficient and so worded as to be open in practice to any interpretation which any future government may choose to place on them.

It is as though its authors are fearful of speaking truth to power, or are under ministerial instruction not to rock the construction and real estate boats.

There needs to be a radically different approach to the National Spatial Strategy. It must start from the clearly stated presumption of a determination to shift the argument, as a matter of government policy, against further speculative construction development and in favour of establishing a clear economic or social need before development may be permitted. This criterion should drive the formulation of the SPED and should form the “Over-arching Thematic Objective”.

The following omissions should also be rectified. The current over-supply of dwellings and industrial sites must be brought under control. The rate of approval of development applications should be reduced by setting - and adhering to - annual threshold figures for different types of construction development until a better balance between supply and demand is achieved. The remaining unbuilt plots of land within the development zones must be allocated in a phased manner, and in the priorities already set out in the document, to slow down and stabilise development. At the same time, a hoarding tax should be introduced on any properties lying empty more than twelve months after completion. Buildings left uncompleted should attract a daily fine if they are left in shell form for longer than a year after the start of construction. A property tax should be introduced on second homes.

Lime-stone from quarries should be controlled by setting annual limits on extraction. Comprehensive adaptability and mitigation management plans should be developed now in anticipation of the effects of climate change on cultural heritage. The north-south divide that currently exists in Malta, to the detriment of those living in the Inner Harbour areas and their immediate surrounds, should be addressed. Finally, given Malta’s ageing population greater stress must be laid on planning for healthy ageing by abiding with the WHO recommendations of age-friendly city and town environments.

In conclusion, while the analysis of the problem set out in SPED is admirable, it fails adequately to draw the right lessons from the evidence it itself adduces to ensure that we make better use of our land in the future than in the past. The paramount environmental challenge facing Malta in the twenty-first century is the need to control building development and the way we use and share this tiny land. The qualities of thrift and moderation must replace the laissez-faire attitude of the last 50 years. If the SPED is to inject reality into Malta’s future planning system, the present draft will need to be radically amended.

Martin Scicluna is the Director General of Malta’s only independent think-tank, the Today Public Policy Institute. He writes here in his personal capacity