Sustainable development strategies and indicators in Malta

Abstract

There have been a number of initiatives for developing sustainability indicators in Malta in recent years, at both national and regional levels. The first attempt to compute national sustainability indicators for Malta was carried out in 1997, by the then Planning Authority (riow integrated within the Malta Environment and Planning Authority), as an aid to the development of land-use planning policies (NCSD, 2006). More recently, the Sustainability Indicators Malta Observatory was established on ist December 2000, hosted by the Islands and Small States Institute. The aims of the observatory were to establish and increase capabilities for monitoring/ reporting of environmental parameters and sustainable development indicators in Malta. Through its participation in a pan-Mediterranean project (Mediterranean Environmental Reporting and Information System - MED-ERMIS), SI-MO developed a set of sustainability indicators based on a methodology proposed by the Mediterranean Commission for Sustainable Development (MCSD) (Cassar, 2006), in collaboration with the Malta National Office of Statistics. The initiative also involved several local specialists. The 130 indicators identified, based on the MCSD guidance were subdivided into six themes, namely: population and society; land and areas; economic activities; environment; sustainable development: actors and policies; and cooperation in the Mediterranean (SI-MO, 2002). The 130 indicators were subsequently reduced to 100, as 3 indicators were found not to be relevant to the local context, and data for 27 other indicators could not be obtained (Cassar, 2009). SI-MO activities continued with a national and international conference on sustainability indicators, held in June 2002 and November 2003 respec- · lively. The latter conference included specific themes focusing on the use of sustainability indicators in the Mediterranean context, and in the context of small islands. The national conference focused on presenting the work of the project to the Maltese public. Key conclusions from discussions during workshops included concerns over lack of data in certain areas, lack of standardization and coherence in the way data was compiled, and variations in data provided by different agencies/ departments.