Population has always been a very central theme to policy in Malta.

It is a fact that Malta is too over populated to be self-sustainable.  This has been the case for a long time – hundreds of years in fact. 

The Knights of St John had to make sure to maintain strong relations with Sicily, for instance, because the vast majority of the country’s grain supply was shipped in from there. 

Likewise, the British fashioned a migration policy which encouraged Maltese to emigrate to other countries and colonies so that the strain on Malta itself could be reduced.  The Maltese emigrated in their thousands in fact in the 1950s, but experimental expeditions of Maltese to far-flung places on the globe such as Australia and even Brazil can be traced to as early as the 1880s in the former case and the 1910s in the latter case.

Even now – over a century later – population remains a key part of local politics. 

Former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had famously said that welcoming foreigners to the country was necessary if the country’s pensions system was to cope for the coming years, current Prime Minister Robert Abela has repeatedly used the excuse that Malta is “full-up” when it comes to stopping African migrants from entering the country, and the Nationalist Party has consistently lambasted the government for, they say, basing the country’s economic growth on increasing the country’s population.

Malta’s population surpassed the 500,000 mark for the first time last year, and a Eurostat publication on Thursday projected Malta’s urban population to increase by 35.4% by the year 2050.

These are numbers which need to be given due consideration: a long-term plan, not one which conveniently coincides with the length of an electoral legislation, is needed so that we can not only quantify the effects of the population on Malta as a country, but also to identify how best to deal with it.

It is a plan which must take into account things such as environmental considerations: we are already seeing localities practically sunk beneath characterless concrete apartment blocks rising to the sky and our roads choked with the pollution of almost half a million vehicles.

What are we going to do?  Keep increasing the height of apartment blocks and keep widening roads? Joseph Muscat in 2014 said that he wanted Malta to become the next Singapore or Dubai.  At this rate, Malta risks becoming the next Brazilian favela rather than Middle Eastern business mecca.

This isn’t just about roads and apartment blocks: one must take into consideration other infrastructural issues.  Can Malta’s waterworks cope with this many more people?  Can Malta’s electricity grid cope?

Then one must take into account the socio-economic aspects as well.  Is our healthcare system geared up for such an increase in population? What about the country’s working conditions?   How will they develop if the population continues to increase in such a manner?

There are countless other questions – too many to fit into one editorial – that need to be asked with any to the future.

They’re questions which need to be asked now.  If we wait till the electoral legislation before the year 2050 to start wondering what to do, then it will already be too late.