Over the past six years, 3.9% of total government expenditure has been on environmental protection, the National Statistics Office said.
The same report also reveals that there was continuous growth in spending in that same area up to 2010. In 2011, expenditure dropped due to the completion of the South Sewage Plant, which cost some €36.7 million.
To put it into context, the average amount of GDP spent per year averaged 1.7%. The sum might sound paltry, but when compared to other European Union states, Malta is one of the highest spenders in this area, with the average being under half a percentage point of GDP. This raises various arguments. On the one hand, one must note that the expenditure can relate to a lot of issues – for example, cleaning up an oil spill (theoretically).
On the other hand, it shows that Malta has taken the issue seriously and is spending a lot of money to make up for mistakes of the past – such as Magħtab mountain and the pumping of sewage into the sea.
Both have now stopped with massive investment in a new engineered landfill as well as sewage treatment plants. The resulting improvement to our bathing water quality can be seen as Malta now has the second cleanest waters in Europe, marginally behind Cyprus.
While there has been macro and micro investment in our environment, our long-term sustainability is nowhere near certain. Our over-reliance on fossil fuels continues to hinder any vision for the future that we may have – the same as anywhere else in Europe.
In its report, the UN said tens of millions of new jobs can be created around the world in the next two decades if green policies are put in place to switch the high-carbon economy to low-carbon.
The report says that as well as generating net new gains in the number of jobs, the switch to a green economy could help to lift millions of people out of poverty. The same report highlights that in the US, there are now about three million “green jobs”, in sectors such as wind power and energy efficiency, the study found. In the UK, the number is close to one million and has been one of the few areas of the economy that has been creating jobs. There are about 500,000 people working in green jobs in Spain.
Of course, if we are to turn the world around and become sustainable, some areas are vulnerable to losses – global fishing fleets will probably have to be reduced if overfishing is to be tackled. Ageing carbon emitting power plants will also need to be replaced with new energy producing methods and that can only be achieved once reliance on oil is eradicated. It is only then, once governments and science academics work hand in hand to find a true, clean and sustainable energy source, that we can actually begin to think about sustainability. What the world’s governments are doing is damage limitation, and not a very good job of it at all.