The importance of scheduling our coast : Dawret-il Fekruna and Hondoq ir-Rummien

Abstract

The State of the Environment Report (SoE - 1998) yields some interesting facts about our 190-km-long coastline, such as that as much as 84 per cent of the accessible coastline in Malta and 74 per cent of that in Gozo and Comino are dominated by tourist developments, while industrial activities such as salt production, desalination plants and quarrying took up to eight per cent and 4.5 per cent of the Maltese and Gozitan coastlines respectively. Such figures are somewhat long in the tooth and refer to 1989, so they are bound to be higher nowadays. Against such an unhealthy backdrop, it is vitally important that our coastal resources are nurtured as much as possible, through proper scheduling. The need for such scheduling is especially dire at the Xemxija-Mistra area, which has whetted the appetite of developers for some time now.