Malta: A country of sacrifice zones

There is a useful concept in environmental politics called the ‘sacrifice zone’. It is a concept that has evolved over the years. It essentially describes places that are effectively assigned to take the hit of economic growth so the rest can reap the benefits. Malta and Gozo are no exception.

Perhaps in the past, places such as Buġibba and Qawra, Sliema, St Julian’s, Paceville, Marsaskala in Malta and Marsalforn and Xlendi in Gozo were made to carry much of this burden. These were places where density, traffic, construction, tourism and commercialisation were allowed to build up because, somehow, they were thought to be able to absorb “a little more”.

Sacrifice zones are created by determining that the destruction of a community, a landscape, a coastline, a village, a historic building, or an ecosystem, is presented as unfortunate but necessary—the price that must be paid for investment, jobs, tourism, property values and progress.

A case in point is the prime minister’s comment as reported by MaltaToday on 8 June, when asked about tourism numbers: ‘Prime Minister Robert Abela has pushed back against suggestions that the government’s stated goal of quality tourism is at odds with rising visitor numbers, saying both elements are necessary.’

And as always happens in Malta, we overheat with our craving to get richer and quicker. As a consequence, the danger is that now we are starting to rationalise not only land but our own thinking and that is when it starts getting messy.

We have turned Malta into a series of geographical and social sacrifice zones. From Fort Chambray to Manoel Island and Comino, and so many other places, where the fundamental question is not simply whether development should happen but what we are prepared to sacrifice for it.

What happens when a historic fort, an island, a coastline, an open space is asked again and again to absorb another project, another commercial use, another intervention? When does this surrender come? And, more importantly, who gets to decide what is sacrificed? This is the heart of the issue at hand.

Economic development in itself is not bad. Investment creates employment, generates wealth and can improve people’s lives. But you can’t detach economic activity from a moral argument. The question is always: What are the costs, who pays them, and who profits?

Development often serves the landowner, who makes millions. The developer makes his money. The government collects taxes. Politicians can point to investment, jobs and economic activity.

But someone else always pays the price: The family paying an increasingly unaffordable rent; the young person shut out of the property market; the senior citizen whose neighbourhood has grown noisier, busier and less recognisable; the worker living in overcrowded accommodation; the person working two or three jobs but still struggling to make ends meet; the small business fighting for survival.

The price is paid by the child growing up with less open space and less places to play, or the person who has nowhere quiet to sit, nowhere affordable to meet others and increasingly feels like a stranger in their own town and village.

This is why poverty, loneliness and exclusion must become part of our conversation about development. We have become very good at measuring economic growth. We count GDP, development permits, tourism arrivals, property deals, employment and investment. But we are much less comfortable measuring what is lost.

What happens when economic growth leads to a society of more buildings, but less belonging? What happens when somebody has a job but cannot afford a decent home? What happens when an older person lives surrounded by people but knows nobody? What happens when young people remain in their parents’ homes because independent living has become economically impossible? What happens when public space becomes ever more commercialised and everyday social life needs money to be part of?

These are not adverse effects. They are part of the equation of development. And there is another danger: the normalisation of sacrifice.
Once we accept that one place can be sacrificed for development it becomes easier to sacrifice another. If one shore has been compromised, the next is easier to compromise. If one historic site is to be treated as a negotiable commodity, so too can the next one. Consequentially, sacrifice becomes a philosophy of planning, not an exception.

This is where our institutions are important. The Planning Authority cannot be simply an administrative machine for processing development. Environmental regulation must not become a ritual, where damage is legitimised, not prevented. Nor should public participation become a box to tick after the fundamental decisions have already been made.

The willingness to say no

We need institutions willing to say no, even when that is politically inconvenient, economically unpopular or opposed by powerful interests. But to do that you need; strong policies, good leaders, impenetrable models of governance, separation of the administration from the appointment of these public servants, and a funding stream which is not dependant on the whims of the state.

Because sacrifice zones are, ultimately, about power. Who has the power to define what counts as progress? Who has the power to decide which landscape matters and which does not? Whose voice is heard in planning decisions and who is expected to simply live with the consequences?

And there is a political temptation here as well. Development is visible, a sign of action and economic success, but the damage is usually slower, more spread out and harder to show. The loss of landscape does not come out nicely in GDP statistics. Nor does loneliness and the loss of community. The anxiety of not being able to afford a home is not visible.

The real question is whether we are ready to build a country where some places, communities and people are permanently expected to carry the burden of everyone else’s prosperity.

Maybe this is the conversation Malta needs to have right now or possibly should have had 15 years ago. A country cannot eat up its own physical and social foundations and still call it progress. If everything is a sacrifice zone, then eventually there is nothing we are unwilling to sacrifice.

Poverty becomes a sacrifice zone when we decide that some people will just have to suffer so the economy can keep growing. When community is seen as sentimental rather than social infrastructure, loneliness becomes a sacrifice zone.

Exclusion becomes a sacrifice zone when some people are told that Malta’s prosperity is available to them only as workers, consumers or tenants, but not as citizens with an equal claim to space, dignity and belonging.

This is why you cannot detach the environmental debate from the social one. A field is not just a field. It could be a playground, a walkway, a meeting place, a place to be immersed in nature, a routine for an elder. A coast is more than a development opportunity. A public garden is not just an amenity.

Places create social relationships. Destroy the places and eventually you weaken the relationships. And that is precisely why the debate on planning in Malta has become so important.

Our institutions are meant to mediate between private development interest and public interest. Yet for many it is becoming increasingly difficult to view Malta’s development trajectory without questioning whether the balance has shifted too much in favour of landowners and developers.

The institutional system repeatedly creates the perception that the development begins with the assumption of entitlement, while the public interest begins with the burden of objection. Environmental regulation suffers from the same problem. When environmental protection becomes a discussion of how much damage is acceptable, instead of what should be protected, public confidence inevitably suffers.

We are moving in a very strange form of prosperity—a country that becomes richer for some, while more and more of its people feel they have less and less of a place in it.