After going through the budget, Nature Trust (Malta) welcomes the Budget 2009 incentives with regards to environment issues. The 2009 budget has finally focused on some of the most pressing environmental concerns such as climate change, renewable energy, waste products, air pollution, end-of-life and green practices. On the other hand issues like a budget vote for Nature protection, environmental law enforcement, addressing the construction and demolition waste and national energy grid feedback incentives have been left out again.

The budget has been positive as regards its incentives, especially those for the small and medium-size enterprises in connection with encouraging the use of renewable energy, with a vote of 33 Million Euros to aid in the changeover to such environment-friendly energy. The households also got their share of incentives although NTM would have liked to see more drive in this area as the incentives will cover some 3000 households only.

The government has also started to encourage the idea of energy performance certification and environmental audits starting also with Government departments. This should help in the improvement of energy use in the operations of industry and civil service departments.

NTM has also noted with satisfaction that the issue of plastic bags has finally been tackled with a more direct approach and that a suggestion raised by one of the Ekoskola participants on junk mail at one of the Eco-parliament sessions has been taken up resulting in an eco tax on junk mail being introduced.

Furthermore the ‘polluter pays principle’ is being introduced in the area of transport and cars will be charged according to their emissions. Nevertheless, NTM feels that in parallel to this positive move the government should have roped public transport and commercial vehicles into the scheme, as so far only the individual car owners have been addressed, leaving the other types of car transport out of the emissions equation. NTM agrees that new cars, for example with Euro 5 standards, improve the air quality. However, social considerations must also enter into the equation, such that those who cannot afford to purchase new cars should be given the facility to have an efficient and flexible public transport system, which would practically obviate the need to own a private car. Malta is at present very far from such a situation. Moreover, all vehicles in Malta should be liable to pay for the pollution they generate especially industrial cars, whose owners are making profits out of their use.

The Government is also addressing local councils and encouraging them to green their operations – a measure which should bring about some positive results provided local councils receive adequate assistance from Government departments.

Despite the fact that over the years, Nature Trust (Malta) has been suggesting a bigger vote for nature protection this proposed measure has again been given a very low profile, and the same goes for enforcement which is so badly needed in our Islands. In the area of energy, NTM feels that the government should seriously focus on trying to reduce the 13% energy losses being made every year by EneMalta. This is too high a percentage and its implications are that more CO2 emissions are occurring in parallel with the high price the economy is paying for fuel costs.

Construction and Demolition Waste, which makes up 80% of the Maltese island’s waste, has not been addressed. It should be noted that apart from waste problems this is also causing problems due to the generation of fine particles, obviously leading to air pollution.

Finally NTM feels that in order for the eco taxes to be considered just, and to enable public ownership of such a system of taxation, Government should set up a fund to receive the proceeds of all taxes being termed as eco taxes, with such proceeds being then made exclusively available for use in environmental initiatives like environmental law enforcement, nature protection, and support for projects and activities applied for and carried out by environment NGOs. Only in this way will eco taxes stop being viewed by the thinking public as primarily shallow revenue-grabbing measures using the environment as an excuse.

Nature Trust (Malta)

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