For far too long, successive governments have treated this country’s few remaining natural areas as electoral spoils. Those spoils have been distributed during each administration’s five-year term – sometimes to buy loyalty before elections and to reward that loyalty after elections, and sometimes for an individual’s personal gain. 

Land is given out, development permits are granted, and illegal developments are sanctioned almost as a matter of course – by those chosen to run the country for the benefit of their own chosen few.

But the politically-motivated environmental rot does not stop there, by any means. During those five-year stretches, more and more land is unscrupulously sacrificed on the altar of economic progress: short-sighted decisions based on short-term economic gain.  

We are a small nation and as such we should be flexible. We should be thinking outside the box. We cannot compete with other countries when it comes to the amount of land that can be allocated for development, our strengths lie elsewhere and it is those strengths that must be exploited.

It is a dangerous game that is being played in Europe’s smallest, most densely-populated and most-overbuilt country. A country with such unique merits requires unique solutions, which have been sorely lacking.  

And it was only a matter of time before a critical mass of the population, including the previously disinterested and disaffected, had its eyes opened to the wholesale surrender and destruction of the country’s last remaining open spaces.

The American University of Zonqor project has, as evidenced by the widespread public outrage expressed since its unveiling, been the final straw.  

Through its obstinate insistence on surrendering 90,000 square metres of Outside Development Zone virgin land to a private educational institution, which in reality will be of very little benefit to Maltese students or the Maltese population, the government has finally managed to well and truly place the environment at the forefront of the national agenda.  

In a strange way, it deserves to be congratulated for that.

Large sections of the population have been outraged at the mere suggestion of the project and what it entails, as also amply demonstrated by the turnout at yesterday’s ODZ protest.

The government would be well-advised to pay heed to this new-found strength of the environmental movement. The Opposition, of late, certainly has done and, despite the cynicism over the obvious political mileage it has gained by riding, and in part steering, this particular bandwagon, it has done the right thing. Moreover, its recently-proposed Public Domain Bill represents a great stride forward for the administration of public land and assets. It should be considered by Parliament and implemented as soon as possible.

But having said that, both parties are guilty of having not only aided and abetted in the wholesale of Malta, but both are also guilty of using the environment as a tool manipulated according to political exigencies. This has been amply evidenced by the handling by political parties and successive governments of the spring hunting season over the years.

It is the legislators’ duty to administer the country in the name of the people; governing parties are not handed the country on a silver plate every five years to do with as it pleases.  

What remains of the country’s natural environment does not belong to the government of the day – it belongs to the people of today, of tomorrow and of the decades and centuries to come.

This issue transcends politics: it is about the people and their most precious resource, the last remnants of its open spaces.  

Through the continued unscrupulous surrender of this precious asset, not only are we selling out our todays, but indeed the todays and tomorrows of our children, their children and all those to follow.  

Once virgin land is cemented over, there is no turning back the clock. No amount of future restitution work will ever return virgin land to what it once was. The die will be forever cast.

This is an issue that no one can ignore, irrespective of their political colours. The issue, as said before, transcends politics.  

A moratorium on all ODZ development has been proposed, on a number of occasions, until a rational plan regarding the country’s limited space is worked out. This should be done on a truly national level, considering the issue’s fundamental national importance, and with the involvement of all those concerned, in both senses of the word: environmentalists, developers, all facets of civil society, the general public and, of course, politicians.

The government must seriously consider heeding those calls, as a matter of urgency.