Church tells DePaul of environmental concerns for Sadeen’s university

Church environment commission calls for caution over siting of university in countryside

DePaul has told the Maltese church’s environment commission that it has a strong commitment to sustainability in Chicago will be happy to share its concerns with investors Sadeen
DePaul has told the Maltese church’s environment commission that it has a strong commitment to sustainability in Chicago will be happy to share its concerns with investors Sadeen

The Church’s environment commission has asked Chicago’s DePaul University, which has authored the curricula for a new private university controversially earmarked for virgin land at Zonqor Point at Marsaskala, to impress upon developers Sadeen Group the need to “find an alternative site for the proposed buildings in order to avoid having a negative impact on the countryside, a natural resource which is highly valued in one of the most densely populated countries in the world.”

In its reply, the University stated that it “has a strong commitment to sustainability in Chicago and [they] will be happy to share [the Commission’s] concerns with [the investors]”.

On its part, the commission said it had already communicated its concerns to investors Sadeen Group of Jordan.

The commission said it was not against any attempt at improving the education sector and at providing wider opportunities in the academic field.

But it said that surprise announcements of large projects such as the one proposed for Zonqor Point, “instead of impressing positively, have a greater chance, as has in fact happened, to shock negatively.”

“If the proper process for allocating land to the investor, for selecting the property or land for the project, and the publication of any studies on the project’s impacts on the University of Malta were carried out, then the project would not have had the negative reaction, which it justifiably has had.”

The commission in fact noted the heightened environmental concern of various citizens and organisations expressing their objections against the siting of the project.

Church environment commission report

The commission said it was surprise that while government issues tenders for small parcels of land or buildings, in the case of AUM it had chosen an investor to take up 90 tumuli of land without any public competition.

“One would have expected an international call for expression of interest for the building and operation of a university,” the commission said, saying this would have demanded a strategy for the development of the tertiary education sector in Malta.

“Simplistic comments such as ‘another university will create competition to the University of Malta’ betray a lack of understanding of various impacts that a new university project as proposed would have on the sustainability and quality of the provision of national tertiary education.”

The commission added that a land-use planning process would also have been carried out to identify the land that needs to be taken up for such a project, offering fiscal incentives for owners of inside-development zones to be encouraged to sell the land.

“Following the designation of such an area, then an international call for expression of interest would be issued with all the planning parameters attached to it,” the commission said, calling for a transparent and environmentally-sensitive process for the setting up of a new university.

The commission said that sustainable development was not equal to whether a project is financially feasible in itself, and also said that AUM’s economic impact may not necessarily be reflected in an improvement in the quality of life of those living in the Southern part of Malta.

The commission also criticised MEPA for selecting the site at Zonqor Point, asking whether the planning authority was itself oblivious to its own local plan policies and regulatory obligations.

“In the past, government has issued development briefs for prime sites within developed zones for which investors, after a competitive process, had proposed, and in fact, paid millions of euros for the land. The fact that it is suggested that the university project can only be feasible in the open countryside does not convince much given that students, the users of the project, will presumably be paying hefty amounts of money for courses. It all depends on the investors’ expectations of the timeframe for the feasibility of the project, which may possibly be anything between eight and 15 years.”

It said the choice of the site totally disregarded the value of the Maltese countryside which parts of the south of Malta still enjoy.

“The proposed project has been presented as providing a planning gain in the form of a national natural park. We cannot understand this proposal since the nature park is already designated in the South Local Plan of 2006. The countryside is already there and the best that can be done for the time being, before ecologically restoring some of its areas, is just to leave it alone.”