Addressing Environmental Challenges in Malta: Insights from the last Academy Members Meeting with Malta Environment Foundation

The last members meeting of 2024 in collaboration with the Malta Environment Foundation (MEF) brought together passionate individuals, businesses, and NGOs to tackle Malta's pressing environmental challenges.

Malta’s natural environment is rich and diverse, home to unique species like the Maltese Wall Lizard, Maltese Honeybee, and Maltese Freshwater Crab. However, ecosystems in Malta face significant threats, including pollution, overdevelopment, and insufficient enforcement of environmental protections. These challenges harm biodiversity and impact human health, agricultural productivity, and climate resilience.

MEF emphasised the need to view environmental issues as interconnected within a larger system that includes businesses, and sees their contribution as key to a more sustainable future. Some solutions discussed included:

• Protecting and regenerating natural and built-up spaces across Malta.
• Empowering communities to take local action for sustainability.
• Encouraging partnerships between NGOs and the private sector to scale impact.

This last point was meticulously elaborated by MEF board member Mark Azzopardi, who remarked on the importance of partnerships between local businesses and NGOs. While NGOs possess the expertise and vision, businesses can provide the necessary resources to amplify their impact.

Investing in the environment benefits businesses in numerous ways:

• Enhanced brand differentiation and customer loyalty.
• Improved employee well-being and productivity.
• Compliance with growing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) expectations.
• Long-term viability through sustainable practices.

MEF itself, as a grantmaking foundation, collaborates firsthand with NGOs, some of which shared their successful stories with the audience. Suzanne Maas, representing Friends of the Earth Malta, highlighted their success in establishing Malta’s first renewable energy community, while Claude Ebejer from ACT explained how grants support their work regenerating landscapes, allowing communities to connect with nature firsthand.

The meeting concluded with a group discussion, through which businesses shared what they are already doing to safeguard the environment and brainstormed what more could be done. Some ideas that came up were:

• The importance of creating a sustainable business from the moment of its conception, avoiding the prospect of just offsetting its environmental impact.
• Collaborating with NGOs that deal with environmental issues.
• Measuring the impact of each action undertaken to be a sustainable business and avoiding engaging in sustainability only as a way of ticking the necessary legislative boxes.

The message is clear: by working together, we can create a thriving environment where both nature and communities can flourish. For more information or to get involved with MEF please reach out to Tamsin Caruana at tamsin@maltaenvironment.org.

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