The Wonderful Wizard of ODZ

There is (let’s face it) ‘no place like home’. 

I imagine that would be true enough whatever the place one calls ‘home’: be it the dust plains of Kansas or the technicolour wonder that was the Land of Oz (at least in the 1939 musical starring Judy Garland).

But when your home happens to be Malta, the truism immortalised by Frank L. Baum over a century ago seems to take on a whole new dimension of meaning. Malta is quite literally a unique place to live, you know. We might lack the sparkle, enchantment and Munchkin happy-clappiness of Oz … but all the same, there can be no doubt that Malta is by far the more ‘magical’ of these two fantasy lands. 

The sort of things that happen here would in fact be considered too far-fetched even by classic fairy tale standards: and something strange and magical certainly seems to have happened to the Labour Party since getting elected to government two years ago.

To appreciate this miraculous transformation, you only have to cast your minds back some 10 years… when the Labour Party was still in opposition, and the Nationalist government was embarking on a series of initiatives that had the more environmentally-minded of its own supporters almost literally howling from the rooftops.

Some of you may recall former Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi’s decision to ‘rationalise’ ODZ boundaries in 2006… effectively increasing the proportion of developable land in Malta by around 16%. You may also recall the large-scale protests that this initiative sparked… and maybe even some of the people who descended upon Valletta armed with placards and banners, all chanting slogans such as ‘Stop the Rape of Malta’ and – more pointedly – ‘ODZ means ODZ’. 

And this is where the magic begins. For among those people were a few who are now ministers and/or MPs militating within a government that has:

a) just ‘reformed’ MEPA to weaken existing restrictions on ODZ development, and even to allow for the retroactive sanctioning of a wide variety of illegal developments… including some which the Labour opposition had campaigned against just a few years ago, and;

b) has just earmarked a parcel of 100,000 square metres of ODZ land at Zonqor point (90% of which is government-owned) for the development of a university campus, complete with residential facilities for 4,000 students. 

OK, perhaps the time has come to spell out what the acronym ‘ODZ’ actually stands for. Here goes:

O is for ‘Outside’. 

D is for ‘Development’. 

Z is for ‘Zone’.

Simple, huh? If a parcel of land is ‘O’ the ‘DZ’, then no ‘D’ can take place in that ‘Z’. Not to build apartments, not to build hotels, not to build airports, not to build Smart Cities… and not to build university campuses, either. 

It’s really not that difficult to understand: in fact, all those Labour MPs – who will now obviously all approve this latest violation of the ODZ principle, when it comes to a vote in parliament – understood it without difficulty at the time.

That includes today’s Environment Minister, Leo Brincat, and parliamentary secretary Roderick Galdes, who back in 2005 had issued a joint press release arguing that: “It is very difficult not to believe that there are no ulterior motives with regard to the Nationalist government’s policy on building and planning...” (How easy is it, then, to believe that there are ‘no ulterior motives’ behind the Labour government’s policy to sanction ODZ development today… and even to engage in a little itself?)

Four years later, in 2009, the same assortment of Labour opposition MPs also organised and attended a similar protest under the slogan ‘Stop the Ruin of Bahrija’ (in response to the development of an ODZ villa by the former PN president, Victor Scerri). This is how it was reported at the time: “The protest was attended also by Labour MEPs Edward Scicluna and Joseph Cuschieri… various Labour MPs including environment spokesman Leo Brincat [and] Rabat mayor Sandro Craus...”

But then, Malta being the ineffably unique and magical place it is… fast forward to the present, and hey presto! There the same Labour officials all are, holding hands as they skip merrily down the Yellow Brick Road to the tune of: “We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of ODZ!” 

And with the simple flick of a magic wand, all that was considered awful and reprehensible when it took place under a Nationalist administration, miraculously becomes perfectly acceptable and even laudable under Labour.

Of all the Labour officials who protested against ODZ extensions in 2006, only one – who is now the President of the Republic – seems to still remember what it was they actually fought against back then. This is from her recent speech at the inauguration of the new Emerald Parliament building in Valletta: “I realise that our future generations are concerned about urban developments that are leaving them with no recreational space to enjoy the environment… It is MPs’ duty to ensure the safeguarding of our human and natural environment with laws that respect sustainable development….”

OK, leaving aside the small conundrum of how “future generations” can be “concerned” about anything, when they haven’t actually been born yet… hers was a very clear appeal to ensure that present laws to protect the unbuilt environment are respected to the letter. Yet the government she formed part of until recently has not only acted as though the restrictions of the Planning Act didn’t exist at all… but it has now embarked on a course of action that will render impossible any application of the same restrictions in future, too. 

Let’s take another look at the Labour government’s two grand achievements on the environmental protection front, outlined above. 

The MEPA reform policy document, issued in January 2014, states in its introduction that “the spirit of the document is to allow whoever genuinely needs to upgrade or redevelop an existing building or construct a new one outside the development zone, in conjunction with its use”.

A little further on it adds that “there may be particular circumstances where there is also a genuine need for more than the minimum thresholds and, conversely, where attention has to be given to proposed development in scheduled areas or areas proposed for scheduling. Proposals which are not addressed by this policy document may be considered on their own merits by the deciding body if it is felt that the proposal will generate an improvement to the area where it is located.”

From the outset, then, the entire reform is geared towards facilitating, rather than restricting, ODZ development. Needless to add, there are no definitions for ‘genuine needs’, or what constitutes ‘an improvement to the area’. The door to arbitrary interpretation was deliberately left wide open. And that’s before even going into the implications of a blanket amnesty, issued against payment to MEPA itself, for entire developments built in ODZ areas. 

In a nutshell, the government which had campaigned against ODZ land speculation under the Nationalists, has just gone and dismantled what little restrictions actually existed to control urban sprawl in this country. The total thrust of Labour’s MEPA reform can be reduced to a little clause in the small print: “any or all of the regulations governing planning applications in this country can be over-ridden at will by the MEPA board, any time it likes, without even giving any explanations.”

And with hindsight, we can now appreciate what this reform was clearly paving the way towards. Having created the loopholes that allow applicants to potentially sidestep any or all planning restrictions, the Labour government went ahead and earmarked a gargantuan swathe of unspoilt coastal land – all outside the development zone – for the construction of a university (or whatever it is supposed to be). 

This goes several light years beyond merely ‘extending the development boundaries’, as the Nationalists had done in 2006. This actually renders the entire concept of ‘ODZ’ null and void. 

If the Zonqor point development goes ahead, it will simply underscore the glaring reality that ODZ does NOT mean ODZ at all. You don’t even have to enter the merits of what it is that the government intends to develop there, either. Whether it’s an American University or a local branch of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is actually irrelevant, at least to this side of the issue. 

The entire approach to the project – from the site selection to the subsequent justification – has quite literally turned the entire planning regulatory framework on its head. For starters, we discover that the choice of Zonqor fell to MEPA’s own chief executive officer, Johann Buttigieg, who also revealed that no studies or environmental impact assessments were required to assist in the decision-making process. 

The only restriction was to exclude ‘Class A’ or ‘Class B’ sites: i.e., areas of archaeological importance or extreme ecological sensitivity. Agricultural value, on the other hand, was studiously omitted from the list of exclusions (and by a fortuitous coincidence, the 100,000 square metres at Zonqor just happen to be agricultural land). And as ‘Class A’ and Class B’ account for only a fraction of Malta’s entire ODZ surface area… this effectively opens up the vast majority of unbuilt land to potential future development.

And the decision was taken by the MEPA CEO himself. In other words, the same MEPA that slaps enforcement notices on ODZ developments owned by lesser mortals, has no qualms whatsoever about writing off 100,000 square metres of development of supposedly protected land, when this is required of it by the government of the day. 

But what makes the decision even more bizarre is the subsequent revelation that the site was chosen precisely because it IS outside the development zone: “Any ODZ land being used for agriculture has a much lower value than land allocated for development, and that is the price the government is prepared to pay,” The Times reported this week.

Well, fancy that. The land is worth less because it ‘can’t be developed’. So we’ll just buy it cheap and develop it anyway, thank you very much…

Honestly: never has a final nail been driven more emphatically into a coffin than this. Now, the word has been sent out that all ‘worthless’ ODZ agricultural land can, after all, be developed (so long as the buyer happens to be the government)… and that sort of lifts the lid on the prices owners of such land can be expected to demand, doesn’t it? 

Far from “safeguarding of our human and natural environment with laws that respect sustainable development”, the Labour government has just fired the starter pistol for a mad land-grab rush that will leave almost no part of the unbuilt environment safe from potential development in future. 

Amazing, what a quick visit to the Wonderful Wizard of ODZ can achieve…