The China Mail - Picturesque Malta set to 'implode' as concrete jungle devours all

"Sometimes I wake in the night and think, 'My God, what if the diggers have come?'" Schembri, 42, told AFP after months of campaigning to prevent a road being laid across the plot.

The tiny Mediterranean island is the most densely populated country in Europe, and approvals for new buildings are soaring despite scandals dogging the development sector.

Malta sparked outrage last month over its decision to demolish a 19th-century British barracks to build a five-star hotel and housing complex, and experts warn the prehistoric Santa Verna Temple is also under threat from encroaching, pool-side luxury units.

UNESCO issued a warning last year over the capital Valletta's World Heritage site status.

But activist Andre Callus told AFP the "eating up of agricultural and green spaces" was an even bigger threat to the import-heavy country, which is on the front line of climate change and has few natural resources.

Malta's thriving economy, skyrocketing population and vast numbers of tourists -- around four million in 2025 -- are causing "massive development pressures on the land", said Callus, a member of rights campaign group Moviment Graffitti.

The country's population has grown nearly 30 percent over a decade.

People "suffocating" in over-developed towns are now escaping to the countryside and building there too, Callus said.

- 'Major threat' -

Schembri's farming roots go back three generations, but her family donated the land decades ago to the Catholic Church, which in the 1990s gave it to the government to administer.

Because the field in the southern part of Malta used to belong to them, the family paid a token rent.

"The feeling was that farming is top priority for the country, we need it for food, for security, so the government protected us," she said.

But a 2006 change in the law meant plots across Malta could be built on.

And as most farmers in Malta do not own the land they work, they cannot protect the fields, making the development push a "major threat to farming", Callus said.

With a nearby site earmarked for housing, developers won permission to tarmac over the field Schembri farms.

She launched a fierce media campaign and eventually the government promised the road would not be built -- though planning permission for it still stands.

It is not just "fertile, pristine agricultural land" that developers are destroying, said Schembri, who also grows tomatoes, marrows and melons.

Over-construction affects water as well, a massive issue in the island country, where rainfall is the only source of natural freshwater.

"It doesn't rain in Malta anymore. There is water scarcity, but we destroyed wells, we destroyed underwater tables," Schembri said.

"Water is the main source of food, and we're losing all of that," she said.

- 'Loophole' -

Located off the coast of Sicily, Malta has suffered record draughts in recent years, and is highly vulnerable to desertification, which is aggravated by intensive urbanization.

"This stratospheric level of growth has an impact on everything; on land, on the sea, on quality of life, and on inequalities because it creates a lot of wealth for some," Callus said.

The Labour party, which won a fresh mandate at a general election last month, has promised to pause contested projects while they are being challenged in court.

Builders have been forging ahead regardless, "after which, it's essentially too late. That's been a big loophole for developers," Michael Briguglio from the University of Malta told AFP.

He expressed scepticism over whether the sector would be reined in, saying both Labour and the opposition Nationalist Party "are in the pockets of developers".

And frustration over construction is not universal. Soaring land and rent prices penalise some, but many homeowners are building extra stories to let them short term, Briguglio said.

The result is ubiquitous cranes, dust and noise, with historic buildings in Malta's distinctive golden-hued limestone torn down to make way for multi-level properties along the coastlines.

Once children played in the fields and streets; now there are "no open spaces" in a country "on steroids", Schembri said.

"I expect Malta at some point to either collapse, or implode."

C.Mak--ThChM