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Opening address by the Minister for Rural Affairs and the Environment George Pullicino during the SENSOR project conference organised by MEPA and by the Centre for Agricultural Landscape and Land Use Research of Germany |
Date:
03/10/2005
Malta’s particular geographical characteristics teach us that sustainability cannot just be about living within natural ecosystem limits. Malta has long ago outgrown its agricultural productivity, and imports grains. Nowadays, it is clear that to sustain Malta’s population, our sustainable development must be about living within limits that are socially derived, and about what we think is valuable in our lifestyles. Any sustainability impact assessment will need to take these issues into account.
This was stated by Minister for Rural Affairs and the Environment George Pullicino during the opening address of the SENSOR project conference. SENSOR is a project about Sustainability Impact Assessment: Tools for environmental, social and economic effects of multifunctional land use in European regions. The conference is being organised by MEPA and by the Centre for Agricultural Landscape and Land Use Research of Germany.
Minister Pullicino said that besides making it particularly vulnerable and concerned about sustainability issues, Malta’s size can teach us some important lessons about sustainability. Malta’s extreme conditions is another issue. Its extremely small size and large density present particular challenges for many sustainability criteria such as urban development standards on open space, density, waste disposal, etc. Another peculiarity of Malta is that its urban areas are substantial in comparison to those in other EU member states. Minister Pullicino said that due to this, agriculture is heavily influenced by urban activities, which explains why, in the language of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, Malta’s countryside is defined as ‘peri-urban’.
Minister George Pullicino said that the positive side of this is that Malta does not suffer from rural depopulation, except to a small extent in Gozo. And the contribution of agriculture to the national GDP is relatively stable in the short term, despite the challenges posed by EU accession last year. He said that Government’s goal for Malta’s countryside is to use the tools provided by the EU Rural Development Programme to balance between agricultural production with improving our countryside, which is very highly valued particularly by the urban population for its landscape and environmental quality.
A third example of Malta’s special conditions is its ‘extreme’ location at the southern periphery of Europe. This geographical situation means that Malta faces very particular transport concerns: sea and air transport are fundamental in linking us closely to the culture and trade links across the Mediterranean and beyond, and on which we depend. Transport sustainability, again, means different things in Malta. The lesson here, I would argue, is that sustainability needs to be defined differently for different places.
It is clear that designing a sustainability impact assessment tool that will be able to assess the impact of EU policy on sustainability at an EU and regional scale will be very challenging, and that is why such an impressive multidisciplinary consortium has been assembled to address this task. In this regard, Pullicino expressed his satisfaction that Malta is going to be used as one of the case studies in this project. Minister Pullicino emphasised that it is very important that the assessment of EU policy on European land use takes into the special characteristics of regions with special features such as islands, coastal zones, mountains and post-industrial land.
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