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It was once hailed as a ‘revolutionary’ environmental law, but less than three years on, the Public Domain Act appears to have ground to a halt, with legal deadlines ignored and no sites having benefitted from its protection. Introduced in 2016, the law a‘Revolutionary’ environment law grinds to a halt
It was once hailed as a ‘revolutionary’ environmental law, but less than three years on, the Public Domain Act appears to have ground to a halt, with legal deadlines ignored and no sites having benefitted from its protection. Introduced in 2016, the law allows sites to be nominated for public domain status, imposing a positive obligation on the government to preserve them for future generations. It sets a deadline of September 15 every year for the Lands Minister to present Parliament with a list of nominated sites, to be compiled by the Planning Authority after a public consultation process. The 2017 report included 24 nominated sites. But the process has been bogged down by a Lands Authority investigation into ownership rights, and none of the sites have yet been granted protection. The 2018 process, meanwhile, never took place and no report was submitted by the September 15 deadline. Stakeholders have since expressed concern over whether the 2019 process will begin in time for the next deadline. Opposition MP Jason Azzopardi, who piloted the law through Parliament as a private member’s bill, told The Sunday Times of Malta that despite unanimous cross-party support for the... Read more