The Police ALE unit is just one of 24 agencies and government departments involved in environmental protection. Most have an administrative remit and none have the police powers of ALE but they can call upon them for assistance and for the prosecution of cases.

In the couple of days that ALE was in the news for being diverted from their current assistance to health authorities back to hunting, the Constitutional judgement AB v State Advocate and Commissioner of Police case was delivered in a closed court. It scathingly certified policing a domestic violence case as fraught with nuqqasijiet lampanti for which the victim was further and repeatedly victimised by the system that basically reinforced the abuser’s impunity. Sorry to say this, but it’s not the only area in policing where omissions empower the lawbreaker.

Set up in the mid-90s at the height of video piracy, anything else administrative that fell outside the job description of the other police branches was lumped with the environment – specifically hunting – to form one unit. The prevalent idea in the 90s was, by the way, the erroneous notion that environmental crimes were white-collar crimes or even victim-less crimes. Environmental justice has evolved by light years since then and the police need to catch up, badly.

The core problem with Environmental Policing is that it is not even recognised for what it is and what it should be: a separate unit, by that name, specialising strictly on eco-offences and working regularly with the other agencies and why not, liaising with the Environment Commissioner. What it should really be doing is gearing up for that promised golden cow of environmental justice: the setting up of the Environmental Court and doing this by recruiting officers who are graduates in the field in the same way ERA’s enforcement unit is populated. How about enforcing eco-offences that go way beyond the hunting laws?

The body of environmental law is so copious that there is enough to keep the specialised unit busy outside of the hunting season. Remember that eco-offences range from the contravention €6.99 to €2.5 million if there is damage to the environment, and even life imprisonment is there’s loss of life. So what’s the over-emphasis on hunting when there is so much else to enforce?

It pains me to see the moral authority of ALE undermined by this throwback structure from the 90s that was already wrongly planned and obsolete even then. How about removing the administrative offences to district policing, perhaps engaging the part-time officers in this, renaming the unit and build up its moral authority?

This case has shown that the few resources available are not well-administered and that police intelligence is not readily available as it should be to really protect the vulnerable. Imagine having specialised officers who know where and how to source environmental data and link it to the system, whether it’s a protected species or a known lawbreaker.  

It’s not rocket science, ask anyone who is a graduate in earth related disciplines. My first degree is in Geography and as an undergrad in the early 90s I did most of my fieldwork with the Planning Services Division, the precursor to the Planning Authority and ERA, in what was the groundwork for the Structure Plan. The coastal zone survey with the University of Durham, the village core and the tourist area surveys meant hiking through garrigue and urban areas and appreciating first hand locational and environmental data.

Environmental democracy is an index used to calculate the efficiency and effectiveness of a country’s environmental protection. Having the right courts for this and a well-structured enforcement system, starting with the police, is crucial to this kind of democracy. Providing the right access to justice, as outlined in one of the pillars of the Aarhus Convention means having a specialised police unit where the public can truly access the environmental justice system with their reports.

But is anyone even aware of these obligations within the police force? When the environmental court is finally set up in Malta, as was promised in the last Labour manifesto, will the police be ready for this or will it be another scenario with the police behaving like a deer in the lights?