It was heartening to read James Debono’s two-page article (23 December) on the contributions of civil society to environment and to the political scene.
It should have also made sobering reading to those who still believe that environment NGOs (ENGOs) shriek too much. Reading Debono’s faithful account, one cannot help being struck by the very low number of successes each ENGO has to its credit and the many, and huge, victories scored by developers and others. Critics of the ENGOs might find the necessary humility to have a rethink on the matter. Still, environmental activists are reconciled to the idea that the not-so-well-informed and those only-too-permeable-to-manipulation will persist in believing, and even repeating, that the environmentalist groups want everything to go their way.
We leave it to the readers of Mr Debono’s article to discover what makes the ENGOs ineffectual in ‘material’ achievements. The answers are not many and not hard to reach. In the meantime, the environmental cancer, which we were promised would be treated, continues to spread even more aggressively. The ENGOs’ greatest real achievement lies in the public awareness they have raised of the sorry state of our natural and built-up environment.
There are, however, some points on which we do not agree with Mr Debono. He seems to equate the ENGOs with some large conglomerate with the duty to police all that is going wrong in the country. ENGOs are just a few scores who try to cope with various areas where the government in spite of its thousands of employees, and other thousands in parastatal bodies, is failing miserably.
They have no television station, no radio stations, no newspaper, no local clubs, no sponsors (big nor small), no freebies to distribute, no funds except their members’ contributions. They have no party machinery behind them; they are, in all cases, made up of a handful of individuals. How can they match the power, or abuse of it, by developers, parastatal bodies or the government itself?
But having no official power does not mean that ENGOs are powerless. They are as powerful as the people make them! And this support has not been lacking. It is only this which makes them strong; strong enough to vex those with vested interests. Is anyone surprised that ENGOs have become the target of recurrent attacks?
Mr Debono says that NGOs focus too much on certain aspects, do not do enough on others and even ignore some others. He should bear in mind that most of the work of these organisations is done in silence and that each ENGO has its own remit, tries to focus on it and not overstep into the territory of others. Synergy among all Voluntary Organisations is certainly of the essence; and one can see from the several press releases undersigned by various associations that there is a great willingness among them to cooperate.
He is also only partly right when he underscores the major issues Malta will be facing in the next decade. He thinks that the importance being given to ODZ should be shifted to other areas. Apart from the fact that this issue is a cornerstone of the Ramblers’ raison d’être, given Malta’s size, the issue of land use is, and will be in the future, of the utmost importance; indeed it can only become more acute. No one must ever forget that a tract of land once lost to the community is lost forever! Dr Gonzi expressed the urgency of this fact when some months ago he proclaimed “ODZ is ODZ!” Can we say that this alarming threat has in any way been countered?
Mr Debono holds that the key to the success of the environmentalists in the next decade will lie in the linkage between the social and economic aspects of each issue. To us these two aspects are simply indissoluble. They have always been and always will be. There is no environmental issue which does not have a social and an economic dimension to it. Indeed it is because this connection is now becoming clear to all that the public is appreciating and answering to the call of the ENGOs.
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