Our constitutional law is based on British constitutional law. In theory, it seems fine. We read British books on constitutional law and borrow their thinking. In practice, however, there’s a snag. Our Constitution is written; Britain’s is not. So they can change their constitutional law through political negotiation. We, on the other hand, have to go to Court to get a legal document interpreted. For the British, the Constitution is a political instrument, i.e. malleable; for us, the Constitution is a legal one, i.e., rigid.

This detail creates huge problems – such as, what to do with Chapter Two of our Constitution? It contains obligations that should guide the Government and Parliament but which are not enforceable in court. Meaning that the principle that should inspire the government to safeguard the environment is in the Constitution but cannot be enforced in court.

The Nationalist Party has proposed the introduction of an enforceable human right to the environment: you can go to court if the State violates your right to a healthy environment – an initiative that seems to me both brilliant and absolutely necessary.

The human right to the environment will obviously include the right to be protected from noise pollution. Ultimately, this right means the right to live in a healthy way, to be productive, and to enjoy your family and your home.

Let’s keep in mind that, despite repeated requests, there’s no law in Malta that comprehensively regulates noise pollution. At least, a search of “legislation.mt” gives no such result.

Health issues related to noise

Noise pollution is a serious public health problem.

Prolonged exposure to unacceptable levels of noise causes not only annoyance, but also, to quote the WHO Fact Sheet on Occupational and Community Noise (2001), “can cause permanent medical conditions, such as hypertension and ischaemic heart disease”.

In 1999, the World Health Organisation published its Guidelines for Community Noise (https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/66217). They contain fourteen pages of negative effects of noise pollution on human health.

“Hearing handicap,” say the Guidelines, “is the disadvantage imposed by hearing impairment sufficient to affect one’s personal efficiency in the activities of daily living”. The adverse effect is therefore not only on health but also, by extension, on the economy. Consider sleep disturbance caused by noise pollution – and not just during the night, but also during the day given that a significant number of people work atypical working hours. According to the Jobsplus website, “40,000 employees... in the private sector...  work shifts, on weekends or after 6pm”. That’s almost 14% of the labour market.

Noise pollution can cause sleep disturbance, meaning difficulty in falling asleep, increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, increased finger pulse amplitude, vasoconstriction, changes in respiration, cardiac arrhythmia, and an increase in body movements. There are also secondary effects: increased fatigue, depressed mood or well-being, decreased performance. “Sensitive groups include the elderly, shift workers, persons especially vulnerable to physical or mental disorders and other individuals with sleeping difficulties” (WHO Guidelines.)

The WHO Guidelines explain how noise pollution affects performance: “studies showed that noise can act as a distracting stimulus... cognitive performance deteriorates substantially for more complex tasks (i.e. tasks that require sustained attention to details or to multiple cues; or tasks that demand a large capacity of working memory, such as complex analytical processes)... Among the cognitive effects, reading, attention, problem solving and memory are most strongly affected by noise.”

But noise can also create “social and behavioural effects” that “are often complex, subtle and indirect”.

When I see the word “subtle” and think of Malta, I immediately worry. Subtle, complex thinking in this country could be a creature listed on the endangered species list, and not just because of noise pollution. But let’s not lose heart.

The WHO lists the following among social and behavioural effects: “changes in overt everyday behaviour patterns (e.g. closing windows, not using balconies, turning TV and radio to louder levels, writing petitions, complaining to authorities)”. Then there are “adverse changes in social behaviour (e.g. aggression, unfriendliness, disengagement, non-participation)” and “adverse changes in social indicators (e.g. residential mobility, hospital admissions, drug consumption, accidents rates)” and “changes in mood (e.g. less happy, more depressed)”.

It’s a long list. But I hope that whoever is the minister responsible for noise (its prevention I mean), opens their ears and listens to what the WHO has to (softly) say.

Instead of aiming to introduce pregnancy terminations (I’ve been advised to use less the A-word because I seem to give the impression I’m too pro-life – whatever this oxymoron could mean, but anyway), this laissez-faire Government should try to improve people’s lives, by protecting us from noise pollution. By “us” I mean both the general population and, more specifically, vulnerable groups of people, defined by the WHO as: “old, ill, or depressed people; people with particular diseases or medical problems; people dealing with complex cognitive tasks, such as reading acquisition; people who are blind or who have hearing impairment; foetuses, babies and young children; and the elderly in general”.

It’s a matter of human rights policy not just law

On account of its impact on people’s health and quality of life, noise pollution is increasingly becoming a matter of public health, and, as a consequence, of human rights policy.

Let’s be clear. There is no explicit recognition of the human right to be protected from noise pollution. But this doesn’t mean there’s no human right to be thus protected. Just consider Udovičić v. Croatia, a case decided by the European Court of Human Rights in 2014. Let me quote from the Council of Europe’s website (https://www.coe.int/en/web/impact-convention-human-rights/-/new-powers-for-state-inspectors-after-woman-wins-noise-pollution-case):

“Ljubica Udovičić’s life became a misery when her neighbour decided to transform the property directly beneath her apartment into a bar and shop. Ljubica first complained to the authorities when her neighbour started making major changes to the building, like demolishing supporting walls. She said that she was then shut out of the decision-making process and her many complaints to the authorities were not properly dealt with. For more than ten years, Ljubica and her family had to deal with excessive noise from the bar. This included loud music, shouting, singing and the sounds of glasses smashing and chairs being dragged along the floor. Customers often got drunk and violent. They sometimes urinated outside. Police were called to the bar dozens of times because of such disturbances. 

The Court “found that the Croatian authorities had allowed the situation to continue for more than ten years without reaching a solution. They failed to comply with Croatian court decisions which took into account some of Ljubica’s complaints and which had ordered her case to be re-examined, with her full participation. This was a breach of Ljubica’s rights.”

This case goes back to 2014. But the matter of noise pollution has an older history. For instance, the first paragraph of the proclamation of the 1972 United Nations Stockholm Declaration states that: “Both aspects of man’s environment, the natural and the man-made, are essential to his well-being and to the enjoyment of basic human rights – even the right to life itself.”

Closer to home, already in the late 1990s, the European Court of Human Rights (in the Hatton case) stated: “There is no explicit right in the Convention to a clean and quiet environment, but where an individual is directly and seriously affected by noise or other pollution, an issue may arise under Article 8.”

In the Moreno Gómez case (2004), the same Court said something which is of extreme relevance to the situation here in Noisy Malta: “A home will usually be the place, the physically defined area, where private and family life develops. The individual has a right to respect for his home, meaning not just the right to the actual physical area, but also to the quiet enjoyment of that area. Breaches of the right to respect of the home are not confined to concrete or physical breaches, such as unauthorised entry into a person’s home, but also include those that are not concrete or physical, such as noise, emissions, smells or other forms of interference. A serious breach may result in the breach of a person’s right to respect for his home if it prevents him from enjoying the amenities of his home.”

Wider than noise pollution

I chose to focus on noise pollution because it is one aspect of the environment which we tend to forget – by “we” I mean the Maltese (even those who are not noisy, or nosey). Our public spaces are so small and so crowded that we tend to forget that sound waves are reflected and amplified in such environments. It is only when we go abroad, and experience bigger and wider public spaces, that we realise how noisy our tiny Malta is.

But the environment is a broader issue. It encompasses noise but also air, sunlight, chemicals, aesthetics, and so on.

Science has demonstrated the inextricable links between a healthy environment and a healthy population – a new meaning to mens sana in corpore sano. This Latin phrase is a truncation of a longer verse, taken from the first-century AD Roman poet, Juvenal. The original phrase is “orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano” – you should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body. It has been used to encourage people to take care of both their minds and their bodies. But it can also be used to encourage us to realise that our collective mental health depends on the good health of our community’s “body”, our environment.

Our collective mental health affects the economy. A 2021 Scientific American article claimed that “our latest estimates show that the incremental economic burden of adults with major depressive disorders was $326 billion in 2018”. Please note: that’s billion.

Party politics

The PN’s idea of enshrining the right to environment in the Constitution as a right the individual can enforce in a court of law is not only brilliant and laudable but direly needed.

Now the obvious question is: will Labour concede that the PN’s idea is spot on, or will party politics have the last word?

I’m not holding my breath, mind you.

However, I do want to add that instead of all the time, annoyingly and in the most utterly tiresome of fashions, subjecting us to this continuous, puerile tit-for-tat, Labour should, one, put Malta first and foremost, and, two, decide to acknowledge in practice that the human rights we are entitled to are not just a judicial remedy but, as a matter of fact, a roadmap for the Government to follow.

Human rights aren’t there for the State to combat in court, but for it to apply in everyday life. There is Human Rights Law and Human Rights Policy, and – incredible but true! – policy is often more crucial than law.