Malta sustainable tourism gets 4.5 million Euros

Electric vehicles, birdlife, water and manure benefit from EU funding

The European Commission has approved funding for 4 new Malta projects under the LIFE+ programme, the European Union’s environment fund.

Malta’s projects are:

LIFE+ Environment Policy and Governance (1 project – 1.9 million)
The DemoEV project will conduct the first demonstration action deploying electric vehicles in Malta, distributing a sample of vehicles to volunteers. The test drivers will be carefully monitored to generate data that will enable the assessment of the potential for carbon savings in comparison with standard mobility habits and trends. Direct or indirect relevance to climate change.

LIFE+ Nature (1 project – 0.9 million)
MALTA SEABIRD PROJECT (BirdLife Malta): This new LIFE+ project is the logical progression of the EU LIFE Yelkouan Shearwater project and uses the roadmap to address the designation of Marine Special Protection Areas for three important bird species: P.yelkouan, (Cory’s Shearwater) C.diomedea, and storm petrel (H. pelagicus), across multiple colonies, through the identification of Marine Important Bird Areas.

LIFE+ Information and Communication (2 projects – 1.7 million)
Investing in Water (Malta Business Bureau): The Investing in Water project aims to raise awareness on issues related to the water scarcity problem in Malta and the importance of water conservation among the target economic sectors. This will also serve as an example to other sectors to adopt similar measures, thereby helping reduce pressure on groundwater resources. This will be achieved by implementing a two-and-a-half-year awareness-raising campaign aimed at target economic sectors.

InfoNitrates (Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs): The project aims to communicate to farmers and stock-breeders their key obligations under the Nitrates Action Plan; the potentially harmful effects on health resulting from improper management of manure; and the way to reduce groundwater contamination. It will train farmers to change their farming practices so that nitrogen levels in soil are reduced and train livestock breeders in the proper management of animal manure so that nitrogen levels in soil are reduced.

LIFE+ is the European financial instrument for the environment and has a total budget of €2.143 billion for the period 2007-2013. The Commission launches one call for LIFE+ project proposals per year.

Valere Tjolle: Valere is editor of the Sustainable Tourism Report Suite 2011 Special Offers HERE