Letters | Sunday, 29 March 2009

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

The need for locus standi

Environmental woes have dogged this country since the 1960s and very few, if any, circumspect solutions have been proposed to actually address such woes. I am proposing three solutions to start addressing the environmental deficit once and for all. First and foremost, the locus standi of NGOs and local councils in cultural and environmental matters should be recognized, such that the authority to initiate legal action against perpetrators of environmental and cultural damage does not reside solely with government and central authority. The doomsday scenario of our courts heaving under a deluge of court cases is easily dispelled by entrenching the need for a threshold of signatures to be collected prior to starting such action – say, 1% of the population. The need for locus standi to be recognized for these entities is especially dire in issues pertaining to illegal occupation of public land. To this effect, a registry of all public land should be set up to ensure the unscrupulous usurpation of public land by privates.
A second proposal introduces the concept of environment legal aid to objecting parties in the planning process, to bridge the yawning gap between small-scale objectors, which include groups of residents or farmers, for example, and hence introduce some equality in public hearings, which are still skewed heavily in favour of developers due to superior resources. Such legal and technical aid would be funded by developers themselves, as a form of planning gain – such a system is already operational in a number of EU member states, such as Hungary and the Czech Republic. The anachronistic case of Erin Brockovich springs to mind – the resilient lady, with very little legal background, managed to accede to the highest settlement in a direct action suit in US legal action, amounting to $333 million, from Pacific Gas and Electric Company, for polluting with chromium groundwater resources, resulting in turn in an elevated number of leukaemia cases in a particular neighbourhood, in 1996.
A third proposal introduces the concept of green certification and accreditation, which is already applicable to the tourism and educational sectors, to the field of EU-funded projects. Any beneficiary of such funding must first be bestowed with such a certificate, which would vouchsafe that the individual and/or entity in question has reached certain environmental standards, adherence to which is constantly monitored.
A consultative seminar will be organized on Saturday 4th April, and all political forces and NGOs in this country will be invited to attend and field their reactions to these three proposals. It’s a win-win situation – no one should disdain such an opportunity. I invite all local NGOs to publicly air their views on such proposals in an effort to better the same proposals.

Dr Alan Deidun
PN candidate for MEP

Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below.
Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.