Civic action in Malta: same old 'nimbyism' or a new awakening?

Civic action groups and angry, and sometimes grumpy residents have been around for decades. Interviewed by Daphne Caruana Galizia in 1989, former planning minister Michael Falzon had referred to Sliema residents who were then already complaining about overdevelopment in their locality as “arrogant”.

30 years on, the former minister, during whose term in office the Planning Authority was set up to regulate development and the first development boundaries drawn up, thinks that social media is making people both more aware of what is happening around them, but even more “vociferous”.

Yet he still thinks, as he did back in his days in government, people are mostly motivated by the NIMBYist ‘Not in my backyard’ syndrome even if he makes it clear that “this does not mean that their concerns are not justified.”

For, after all, in such a crammed and small island, isn’t everything which happens in someone’s backyard? Isn’t NIMBYism the natural reaction of communities whenever pieces of their collective memories and neighbourhood signifiers like trees, old walls and buildings are torn down?

Share the outrage

Civic action on land-use issues dates back to the birth of Din l-Art Helwa in the 1960s. Over the past decades big projects like golf courses, cement plants and car parks have been stopped by various coalitions of residents, NGOs, anti-capitalist activists, church groups and farmers.

Yet the advent of the social media has made it easier for people to spread the message. The risk is that people may appease their conscience by making a “like” or a “share” only to lose interest by the time of the next cause. And the sheer onslaught of news on a plethora of unrelated developments leaves people feeling more hopeless than ever, with the social media being fertile ground for exaggerations and partisan twists, which discredit the legitimate concerns of traditional ENGOs.

But a tipping point may have been reached thanks to the intensification of development pressures triggered by the plethora of pro-development policies approved after Labour was elected in 2013, coupled by a sudden increase in the country’s population. This may have triggered a new wave of bolder activism.

Flimkien ghal Ambjent Ahjar may have represented a first wave of civic awakening in the first construction boom, fuelled by the 2006 local plans. What perhaps distinguishes the latest wave of civic action is that people have become bolder. This may be why a recent protest by Graffitti activists who stopped a PA board meeting set to approve an ODZ fuel station, has captured the public imagination.

Zonqor opens the lid

It was the Zonqor protest organised exactly three years ago, which opened the lid for civic action, following a lull in activism immediately before and after the 2013 general election. By reaching a critical mass in numbers, it emboldened people to mobilise against other developments.

But how effective is civic action and protest? After the Zonqor protest the government went ahead with allocating ODZ land to the American University but only after substantially decreasing the ODZ portion of the development. This was followed by a successful campaign to secure access to Manoel Island.

The lawyer Claire Bonello, a protagonist in various campaigns during the past two years and who was recently appointed chairman of the Manoel Island Foundation, says the past few years have been “very eventful”.

“In the case of Manoel island a dispossessed community supported by wider networks came together, forgetting political allegiances and consistently supporting the initiatives to guarantee public enjoyment of the island. There was a large degree of community engagement there – and that is vital”.

But Bonello warns that mobilisation has to be accompanied by sound professional knowledge. “The voracious construction lobby has smartened up – it is a better-oiled machine, with good PR. It has an army of professionals and consultants to argue its case. The environmental lobby has had to do the same… Posters and protests alone won’t cut it”.

A clear example of this was the victory achieved by ENGOs and the Sliema local council in the appeal against the 38-storey Townsquare development. “I feel that the successful appeal was very much due to sustained legal scrutiny and action. When documents and calculations essential to the case are being withheld from the public, we've had to use legal means to overcome those hurdles”.

Bonello contends that the chances of success are greater when civic action goes hand in hand with local councils and established NGOs.

“Local councils and NGOs have institutional knowledge and legal and planning expertise accumulated over time which is necessary to contest the complicated cases we are facing these days”.

How to play politics

According to former Minister Michael Falzon civic action by residents can be highly effective on a political level. “No politician can disregard civic action... the only problem is that while politicians and planners have to strike a balance between conflicting interests through compromise, environmentalists tend to be averse to compromise.”

Yet politicians may also have learned this lesson. For it has become a pattern on the government’s part to shock people with extreme proposals, provoke outrage and then downscale the project enough to depict anyone left opposing it “an absolutist.” A pattern which can be seen from the AUM development in Zonqor to the Mdina road project. For after the majority of trees have been saved, will anyone opposing the loss of agricultural land be labeled an extremist?

With both parties wary of taking on big developers like the db Group, civic action may be filling a political void.

“People have realised that politicians are unlikely to oppose developments proposed by big time donors to the parties, so they’re simply side-lining the political parties and taking action themselves,” Bonello notes.

Yet in a highly partisan country like Malta, political lobbying may be a winning card for civic action groups in a small country where a single family can be large enough to tip the balance in any particular district. 

The game has been played in the past, as was the case in residents’ campaign against the Qui-Si-Sana carpark in which residents lobbied AD, Labour and rival Nationalist MPs to finally get what they wanted. In its heyday AD also posed its latent threat, thus winning environmental concessions from the PN government on the eve of the 2008 election.

Every campaign has a story. Much depends on the local dynamics at play. There are even cases where, according to Michael Falzon, developers hide behind “civic action” to thwart commercial rivals in their turf wars. 

The risk is that when it comes to issues, like the cumulative impact of small-scale ODZ developments which are slowly eating away the countryside and where no local community exists to fight the battle, environmentalists and activists are destined for defeat. Nor can civic action groups on their own come up with an alternative to the current growth at all costs. Indeed, there seem to be no brakes on the accelerator economic model.