News | Sunday, 27 December 2009

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The green decade: the rise of civil society

The 90s ended with the stark realisation that the two major parties were more scared of alienating powerful lobbies like hunters, squatters and building contractors than the prospect of losing votes to the Greens. But the noughties ended with Nationalist Party pandering to the green vote on the eve of the 2008 election. JAMES DEBONO traces the rise of civil society through the last decade as the key to this epochal transformation.

Coming straight out of the starkly polarised political landscape of the 1980s, Zghazagh ghall-Ambjent was the first green NGO to protest in the streets and to speak its mind on a myriad of issues ranging from land use and hunting to plastic bottles, transport and renewable energy, all of which fell under the generic term ‘the environment’. Beaten by socialist thugs in 1984 for protesting against Lorry Sant’s building schemes and largely ignored by a pro-development Nationalist government after 1987, some greens came to the conclusion that change can only come from the ballots taking the unprecedented step of setting up a Green Party in 1989 which shook the system by gaining 4200 votes in the 1992 election but suffering a decline of votes in national elections ever since. And despite the spirited fight which included acts of civil disobedience like chaining themselves to tractors or barges, the greens and fellow travelers on the extra parliamentary left rarely managed to get their way against major developers, as long stretches of the Maltese coastline were being sold at a pittance to make way for hotels or sheer property speculation.

Going local
Despite its pro-development bias, the three major reform planks pushed by post 1987 PN governments – namely the devolution of power through the setting of local councils, the creation of a Planning Authority open to a degree of public scrutiny and finally the bid to persuade the country to accept EU membership – ultimately did have an invigorating effect on Maltese civil society.
One notable exception to the rule that mega-developers always get it their way occurred in 2004 when the MEPA board refused a permit for a golf course in Verdala. This civil society victory came in the wake of an effective coalition of green NGOs, the Green Party, a myriad of left-wing, church and farmer organisations as well as the Rabat local council. It was a veritable lesson on how people from different outlooks can cooperate on a single issue and win the battle for common sense.
The devolution of power in the 1990s also gave civil society a chance to break away from the conditioning exercised on national politics by powerful interests. A coalition of local councils led by Siggiewi’s former PN mayor Nenu Aquilina successfully resisted the construction of a cement plant in Siggiewi proposed by developer Charles Polidano in 1999. Yet, the same council was less successful in its bid to stop the Ghar Lapsi quarry, belonging to the same owner.
Another example of successful local activism was the campaign against a temporary landfill a short distance away from the Mnajdra temples, which saw environmentalists, the Labour-led Qrendi council and Nationalist backbencher Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando speaking on the same wavelength. And last year, Lija mayor Ian Castaldi Paris successfully persuaded MEPA to change its own local plans not to allow a three-storey development to dwarf the Belveder etower, whose architect was the PN’s Siggiewi mayor Robert Musumeci.
But residents remained helpless when confronting powerful economic interests, as was the case with the MIDI and Fort Cambridge developments in Tigné.
Surprisingly, one of the projects which attracted the least attention from green NGOs was the MIDI project, which altered once and for all the Marsamxett harbour views. Not only was the project approved in a piecemeal fashion but the government subsidised it by granting the developers a €3.3 million discount on the dumping of waste in to the sea. As regards Fort Cambridge, an environmental impact assessment was only conducted following the intervention of the EU commission.

Did the EU save us?
It was the EU membership issue which galvanised the environmentalist movement in the first part of the decade. For the first time, quality of life issues like air quality, sewage treatment and landfills rose to prominence in the political agenda. A new breed of middle-class voters who were increasingly disenchanted by the shabbiness of the country, started to look to the EU as their saviour. The recent decision by the European Court to ban spring hunting vindicated
the view that the EU could take the decisions both major parties were afraid to take on their own. EU directives on air pollution and nature protection also gave new legitimacy to what environmentalists had been saying for the past two decades. Arnold Cassola’s near-miss in the 2004 MEP elections may well have been the first manifestation of the emergence of an angry middle class which expected EU membership to improve their quality of life, but which instead found themselves living at the mercy of cranes and arrogant contractors.

Enter Astrid Vella
The time was ripe for Astrid Vella’s new lobby: Flimkien Ghall-Ambjent Ahjar. What finally spurred Astrid Vella to action was the demolition of Sliema’s oldest house in High Street, spurring Vella to wage a relentless campaign against its removal. “If MEPA had not issued that permit, I think this civil society movement would not have started. This case was indicative: when developers have enough leverage, things are done their way,” Vella said in an interview in 2006. The first two years of Lawrence Gonzi’s term as Prime Minister saw the largest ever environmental protests, attended by a motley crowd of angry pale blue voters who took to the streets protesting against rampant development and the extension of building schemes. Like its more radical precursors in the 1990s and unlike the more established conservation groups, FAA was not shy of street protests and demonstrations of people’s power. For the first time ever, environmentalists were successful in getting hundreds of protestors in national manifestations against the extension of development zones and the Ramla development. The fact that hundreds gathered in Valletta to protest against a development in Gozo showed that the FAA crowd was not simply motivated by NIMBY.
But like the more established environmental NGOs like Din L-Art Helwa, BirdLife and Nature Trust, FAA was jealous of its political independence and steered clear of any association with Alternattiva Demokratika, even if it shared most of its battles with the party. Astrid Vella even refused to take part on a TV programme discussing party manifestos on the eve of the 2008 general election, and a protest against the Bahrija development was only organised after the results of the June 2009 MEP elections were out.
Yet this did not exempt NGO leaders from becoming targets of personal attacks. As recently as last month the Ramblers Association’s president Lino Bugeja was attacked by former PN president Victor Scerri for possessing a small piece of ODZ land, which he never applied to develop. And even Astrid Vella was singled out for once applying for an ‘ODZ’ swimming pool located on a 20- foot roofed terrace.

The greening of GonziPN
But the growth of this civil society movement after 2004 heralded serious U-turns by the PN in the last two years before the 2008 election. The first act of redemption by the Gonzi government was the re-designation of Xaghra l-Hamra as a national park, after a disastrous attempt to turn the area into a golf course. This was followed by MEPA’s decision to revoke a controversial permit for the development of villas on the Ulysses Lodge site overlooking Ramla Bay in Gozo.
The last act in the PN’s transfiguration into a ‘green’ party was Gonzi’s promise to address the country’s environmental deficit by taking over MEPA. Little did the green electorate know at the time that a few weeks before the same election, Gonzi had secretly promised the Armier boathouse squatters that none of their illegal shacks would be demolished. But the strength of NGOs alone cannot explain the PN’s conversion.
The latent political threat posed by AD could also have played a role, considering that it was difficult to imagine the ‘bourgeois’ environmental crowd switching wholesale to Alfred Sant’s Labour. This may change with the election of Joseph Muscat as PL leader, mainly thanks to the credible stance taken by his new spokesperson on the environment Leo Brincat on issues like the ‘black dust’ in the south of Malta and his constant interrogations in parliament. Yet Labour’s stance on issues affecting powerful lobbies like hunters, squatters and contractors remains pregnant with unresolved contradictions.
Surely the PN’s strategy of doing away with the Greens as an electoral threat by emulating their ideas worked, to the extent that AD received another electoral drubbing, garnering only 1.3% of the vote in the general election and only 2.4% in last June’s MEP election.
But the high expectations raised by Gonzi on the eve of the election may well return to haunt him by 2013. The PN, upon re-election, once again sent mixed messages on the environment. Despite the promise of reform, MEPA continued to approve controversial developments like Fort Cambridge in Tigné, a 12-storey development in Mistra, residential units in a valley in Mosta. More significantly the choice of heavy fuel oil to operate the new power station at Delimara dealt a blow to the PN’s green credentials. And while heralding a MEPA reform which seeks to reduce conflict of interests of practicing architects on the institution’s decision making boards and other measures aimed at strengthening enforcement and transparency in the beleaguered institution, the Prime Minister lately found himself at odds with MEPA’s own frustrated internal auditor Joe Falzon.

The institutional way
Handpicked by Environment Minister George Pullicino as MEPA’s first internal auditor in 2004, after having served as deputy chairman of the Planning Authority and chairman of a DCC board, few expected Joe Falzon to zealously scrutinise the institution he knew so well. Over the years he became an institutional reference point for NGOs and the angry pockets of residents who resorted to his assistance.
From the very start of his appointment in 2004, Falzon defied the Authority’s culture of secrecy by insisting on his right to pass his reports on MEPA’s operations to those who had made the complaint. Falzon’s frank language contrasted with the opaque planning jargon prevalent in this institution.
But Falzon’s stormy relationship with the government and the authority he was appointed to scrutinise exposed the limits of his role, especially when considering that his recommendations were rarely accepted, except in a couple of politically sensitive cases.
The auditor’s latest verdict, found in a report castigating MEPA for sanctioning illegalities in an archeologically sensitive zone of Ta’ Baldu, speaks volumes on whether change is possible from within the institutions. “What is the point of having the MEPA at considerable expense to the taxpayer when the professional advice of its officers is flagrantly ignored by the DCC without any justification being given? Why not revert back to the previous PAPB system where a Board supported with the minimum clerical staff approved or rejected planning applications with little if any professional input? It would be much cheaper for the taxpayer than maintaining the MEPA, and the result would be the same.”

The next decade
One unforeseen consequence of the rise of the environmentalist civil society movement in the noughties was its exhaustive preoccupation with land use issues – to the extent that ODZ farmhouses and stables featured more in their agenda than less visible but socially explosive issues, like groundwater extraction, waste incineration, public transport, climate change and renewable energy which remained the domain of smaller groups like Friends of the Earth and a few experts like hydrologist Marco Cremona and physicist Edward Mallia. The untimely departure of Julian Manduca in 2005, one of the few environmentalists with an ability to bridge the gap between the environmental and the social, was a major setback for the green movement in general.
The next decade will see environmentalist wrestling with more complex issues than whether a permit is ODZ or not. One such issue relates to the pricing of energy where Greens have to find a balance between social justice and sustainability. But ultimately it could be this linkage between social and economic issues which could create a niche for greens in the political market.

2009 Victor Scerri’s Bahrija farmhouse’s last permit revoked by MEPA

2008 Mistra’s Spin Valley disco permit revoked by MEPA

2008 Fort Cambridge’s 20-storey development approved

2007 Ulysses Lodge development permit revoked by MEPA

2007 Xaghra l-Hamra golf course scrapped by government

2006 ODZ ‘rationalisation’, still under EU investigation

2004 Verdala golf course permit refused by MEPA

2004 Qrendi landfill scrapped by government

1998 MIDI project approved and extended in stages up till present day

No decision yet – Hondoq ir-Rummien and Ta’ Cenc

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