SPEECH BY THE MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

PAPER SUBMITTED BY THE MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
DR FRANCIS ZAMMIT DIMECH DELIVERS A SPEECH AT THE MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE ON WATER IN THE 21^ST CENTURY, HELD AT THE HAGUE, THE NETHERLANDS, ON MARCH 21 AND 22, 2000.

It is not surprising that the attention and concern of a World Water Forum should be focussed on fresh water, but it is equally to be expected that a representative of Malta would wish to devote the first words of his contribution to the debate on the importance of not forgetting and not underestimating seawater.

Indeed, I expect that to many of you the name of Malta evokes our initiation of the great saga of the Law of the Sea. Admittedly, we proposed that the concept of the Common Heritage of Mankind be applied only to ocean space beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. But the new approach to the sea which we proposed also served to highlight the importance of the sea-land interface, the coastal zone, which can be defined as the area where freshwater and seawater systems interact.

Moreover the more important aspect of our proposal was to bring to bear on world development issues the different outlook which is inevitably brought about by shifting from a land-based to a sea-centred point of view. Inevitably, one is forced to shift from short to long term thinking, from fragmented and sectoral to holistic and integrated approaches. Such approaches are bound to have a beneficial effect on attitudes to World Water problems in general.

Undoubtedly coastal areas are among the most decisive battlegrounds on which the fortunes of future generations are at present being fought. In this context, Malta is an island of a size that compels us to regard it as totally a coastal zone. Hence, the main experiences which we have learnt from and which may be of some interest to others are related to the interface between sea and fresh water.

Until some time ago the importance for each other of the two kinds of water – the salty and fresh – was hardly given due recognition. The divisions within such United Nations institutions as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), or even the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility prevented it. Recently, however, all the four international bodies I have mentioned have taken steps to re-organize themselves internally in order to foster the integration of management of both the coastal sea and other coastal water resources – including not only rivers and canals but also natural aquifers and sewerage.

A very clear instance of a phenomenon which puts into high relief the need for such integrated management because of significant cross-influences is tourism. For many islands, tourism is of course the main support of the economy. The tourists often come to our and other island shores primarily to enjoy the luxury of bathing in seawater but the problematic result is an increased scale of demand for fresh water. The rise in demand is understandably not proportionate to the number of tourists in respect of permanent residents. (In Malta the ratio of visitors per year to the local population is roughly three to one). It is also related to the habits and exigencies of people who come mostly from countries where water is not, or not considered to be, a scarce resource.

Moreover, the influx of tourists is certainly not the first or only phenomenon to provoke a critical shake-up of the seawater/freshwater cost-benefit account. Long before the ‘golden hordes' discovered our Island, the fresh water supply problem reared its ugly head for the first time with the arrival of the sea-faring knights of St. John around the middle of the 16^th century.

The attractions of the salty waters surrounding our Island to these last generations of the medieval European chivalrous class lay in the rich opportunities for profitable corsairing which was the only still viable version of crusading at that time.

The Knights, however, did not only inflate demand for water by provoking demographic growth on land, as well as needing it plentifully to provide for their fleet of galleys at sea. They also established a very sophisticated infrastructure for water collection and distribution. They built aqueducts and filtering chambers modelled on the Roman System. They gathered together the waters from a number of springs from the perched water aquifer and conducted them to the cities and port areas, to supply many fountains and water troughs. Happily they avoided the use of lead piping and its associated problems.

I have indulged in this brief foray into sixteenth and seventeenth century history, because it underlines how long felt is the need and productive the possibility of water management, as well as the ancient and complex interrelationship between sea and fresh water. To underline the need of integrated seawater and freshwater management especially in islands and coastal zones is indeed the first point that I wished to make. Of course, today it requires more highly and scientifically trained professional and technical staff, but even today, in water resource project planning, simple designs still prove the best.

Often what is needed is the adaptation to local conditions of techniques which have already proved successful elsewhere. In this respect, Malta is actually in a position to help other small islands developing States (SIDS) because of its centuries old but constantly technologically updated experience, and we would be happy to put this experience at the disposal of anyone who may want to reap some advantage from it.

There are, in fact, four main dimensions of our experience in meeting ever increasing demand pressures on the supply of fresh water. The first is the use of appropriate resource assessment techniques and computerised model-building as a development and management tool that I have already been referring to. The second, third and fourth dimensions also arise out of the same awareness of the crucial importance for islands and coastal zones of the seawater/freshwater interface.

The first reaction in Malta to the ever increasing demand pressures on water not only because of the tourist influx, but also because of industrialisation and changing styles of life of the local population, in the mid-seventies, was to maximise the exploitation of the aquifer. This, coupled with the nature of the terrain, created the risk of our drinking water deteriorating to below WHO approved standards. Even the merest whiff of suspicion of that eventuality had immediately menaced our main economic lifeline: tourism. The fear of inadequate freshwater can easily outbalance the attractions of immersion in warm seawater. Since then, we have developed to state-of-the-art conditions our monitoring systems and we are perfecting the techniques of replenishing our endangered aquifer.

The second reaction was to turn to the salt sea for salvation. Desalination through reverse osmosis plants today meets about half of our fresh water needs. Evidently, in our thirty years experience of utilising desalination techniques to such a large extent, our scientists and engineers have learnt a lot about the working and management of such systems. Once again Malta offers this knowledge resource to others in the same spirit in which we proposed the concept of the common heritage of mankind to the global community.

Desalination, of course, has its negative sides, both financial and environmental. More than eight per cent of our national fuel bill is spent on the running of our very large reverse osmosis desalination plants. Such plants are in some way significantly contributing to our greenhouse gas emissions. Consequently, our great desire at the moment would be to find viable ways of operating our desalination plants with clean, alternative energy. To fulfil our desire we would of course appreciate international support and co-operation.

Evidently, we are favoured by the sun as well as by the sea, but the value of space and the beauty of landscape are prohibitive factors against the use of current methods of harnessing solar energy. Once again, our diagnostic eyes are turning to the sea – to its providing the space over which reflecting panels can float; and to the energy that could be generated from waves, currents and thermic differences. In our opinion this World Water Forum should give a greater impetus to the research which would enable the sea itself to provide the energy with which to convert more of it from salinity to freshness.

The fourth dimension is the sewerage system by which the clean water piped into built up areas is piped out in polluted form. Soon, by 2005, this kind of dirtying of the seawater in some places, when its cleanliness in others is one of our and many an island's major assets, will come to an end. The construction of sewage treatment plants will ensure that all our waste water will undergo treatment which will make it useable for industrial and irrigation purposes.

I would like to conclude my intervention with a remark about popular water awareness. In his famous 1984 essay, H₂0 and the Waters of Forgetfulness, Ivan Illich had opined, in his characteristically paradoxical, insightful but radically perverse way, that industrial society has made it next to impossible for the children of our cities to perceive water with the same sense of its loveliness as their ancestors could, let us say, in the Malta of the Knights, when they placed at each point where it became accessible an appropriate fountain, with sculptured nymphs and dolphins narrating a unique myth, corresponding to the citizens' archetypal dreams. Illich wrote: "H₂0 is not water in this sense. H₂0 is a liquid that has been stripped of both its cosmic meaning and of its genius loci."

I believe, however, that he is wrong in believing that there is an incompatibility between the still "unfinished project of modernity" and the poetry of water. Just as the projected exploitation of the resources of the seabed in the new Law of the Sea has served not to disenchant the ocean, but rather to rekindle the imagination of all kinds of artists in its regard, so too I believe the most utilitarian approach to water resources is capable of being enhanced by (and of itself enhancing) the loveliness and the lovableness of water, which is as rich in symbolic power as in economic, as life-giving in a spiritual as well as physical sense