Nature Trust President says Public Domain Bill is a step in the right direction

Shadow Ministers Jason Azzopardi, Marthese Portelli and Nationalist MP Ryan Callus met with Nature Trust representatives over the party’s Public Domain Bill, designed to safeguard the natural heritage of the country.

Azzopardi said that the party had received a lot of support for the initiative, both from environmental NGOs and from society at large.

“The bill was presented in parliament some two weeks ago, and we are now open to discussions and talks with various stakeholders to amend the bill as required,” Azzopardi said during the meeting, which the media attended the opening of.

Azzopardi added that the Nationalist Party felt that this initiative went beyond political issues and that nature deserved to be safeguarded irrespective of one’s political belief.

Nature Trust president Vince Attard said that the trust had been one of the first to show its support of the bill.

“Malta has a huge problem of over development, and we should do our best to safeguard the Natural Heritage of the country while at the same time keeping these important sites open to the public.”

Attard also referred to the group’s work to support and promote eco-tourism in the country over the past years through the organisation of things like trekking expeditions among others.

“This is becoming increasingly difficult as access to some of these routes has been dropping over the years, which stresses the importance of such a bill in our country,” Attard added.

The Nationalist Party proposed a revolutionary public domain bill in a bid to protect Malta’s coastline and seabed, and sites of historical and ecological importance, by preventing their commercialisation some time ago.  

Similar laws protecting the public domain exist in countries like France and Italy.

The law, penned by shadow justice minister Jason Azzopardi, proposes that the first 15 metres of the coastline and the country’s seabed and subsoil, cannot be commercialised.  

It also enables NGOs to propose land parcels that should be declared as public domain. The government will have to reply to such requests within four months.  

But the proposed bill will not be retroactive and will not impact on concessions granted by governments in the past. Moreover the new law still allows parliament to commercialise these areas through a parliamentary resolution.