Both major parties have yet to come out with their election manifesto but on principal issues they have been giving enough signals for the country to understand where they are heading.

The issue this leader would like to focus upon today is our environment.

There can be no doubt that Malta being what it is, its environment is crucial for its future.

The recent study by the University (pg 8, last week’s issue) showed how Malta was quite larger in the past centuries and how this has been progressively eroded over the centuries.

Over the past decades, an enormous amount of pristine and mostly agricultural land has been taken over for development. The land grab these past, say, 50 years, has been far greater than anything over the previous centuries.

As a result, as seen from the air, Malta is now one huge conurbation that stretches from Zabbar in the South to Attard in the West and San Gwann in the North.

This land grab has been carried out both by private individuals (or developers or speculators) and also by successive governments who have taken huge swathes of land to give plots to those who wanted them (and also many who did not really want them but took them when they were offered at dirt cheap prices). This government has not, as its predecessors, widened the Development Zone but it has carried out what was euphemistically called a Rationalisation Exercise, which consisted in bringing bits of land outside the Development Zone into the DZ “just to make the map simpler”.

The result has been, and still is, a glut of empty properties, both old and new, in the village cores as well as on the outskirts.

Malta has also assisted to a huge expansion of construction companies together with their ancillary services. All this expansion provided jobs for many people so it is not something to cast aspersions on. Many started from zero and as a result of much hard work have succeeded in becoming a big company employing hundreds if not thousands of people.

Now, with the approaching election, the two main parties have engaged in sessions of quite clear hint giving, rather like a leapfrog competition in which they promise heaven and earth.

The bug-bear they target is, obviously, Mepa. Once again, they promise quicker responses and also a laxer regime. On the one hand, Labour is committed to a quick response on its new power station project while PN seemed to have promised a rapid response to projects for the construction of hotels in Gozo.

In a statement, the Malta Developers Association “expressed satisfaction that the Labour Party has already made proposals in favour of the Permanent Residents Scheme, tax on rental income from residences through a withholding tax and the renewal of Mepa permits that have already been issued”.

Only the smaller party, Alternattiva Demokratika, stood away from this Gadarene rush to please the developers. It said, inter alia, “A few months after the 2005 Census [the PN government] launched three measures which increased the possibilities for development. Through the so-called ‘rationalisation exercise’ land considered suitable for development was increased substantially all over Malta. The permissible heights for development were increased in various localities as a consequence throwing to the wind investments in solar energy technology made by various families as next to their properties higher buildings were constructed, their photovoltaic panels were now almost permanently in the shade. The third measure was one which facilitated the construction of penthouses when everything was already pointing towards the need to restrict such construction: the construction of penthouses should be restricted as this is the only way to ensure the right of access to solar energy for residents of blocks of flats.”

It is obvious, given political reality, that nothing will stop the rush to please more and more developers and speculators and so one can safely predict that Malta will continue to become one congested island with among the highest urban densities in the world, creating huge problems with regards to all kinds of infrastructure.

It is perhaps not too late to plead for a nation-wide study on where the existing trends will lead us and their consequences. There is not much to do about the land that has already been grabbed and developed (and not much to be done either about the ODZ land that has been, mostly willfully, degraded).

Surely one can see that the construction sector cannot continue to expand as it will shortly run out of land to develop. Surely a sane country would try and find alternative use for the companies and people engaged in the sector. Surely a sane country could at least try to manage its essential and restricted riches differently – not by engaging in this leapfrog, beggar your rival way but by tackling the issue seriously and from a strategic point of view.