What would you say is the greatest environ-
mental achievement Gibraltar has implement-
ed in the last couple of years?
It is the increased awareness. I remember giving
a talk on Climate Change in the 80’s in John Mac-
intosh Hall, about 20 people attended and nobody
knew what I was talking about. Climate change has
been happening ever since the Industrial Revolution
in the 1800’s, awareness is decades old but hasn’t
been recognized until recently.
The way society has changed; using less fuel,
electricity, treasuring our green areas and aware-
ness of single use plastic, I think these are all
achievements. The international media and internet
has done a lot, but I think that one of the things that
has helped develop awareness in Gibraltar is the
fact that there is a minister for the environment that
genuinely believes, who is receptive, and who has
worked with the support of his colleagues and Chief
Minister in making steps. When people find that you
listen, people will open up and feel empowered in
making a difference so I like to claim a little bit of
the merit in the change that we can see in Gibral-
tar. Some people now come up to me claiming that
I am not doing enough and I always say, I will never
do enough for the environment. Change has to be
done in a responsible way in order to not risk going
too fast. Even though it is a crisis, sometimes going
too fast without people understanding and bringing
people with you, you risk falling flat on your face,
and people react against it. We all have to go on
this together.
Are their plans to expand Gibraltar’s recycling
facilities?
Recycling has been a victim of it’s own success.
People forget that when I became a minister in
December 2011 you could only recycle paper and
cardboard. You couldn’t recycle plastic, tetra brick,
glass or oil, this I introduced in early 2012 and was
transformational. People have responded positively,
putting pressure on the system. As figures increase
annually we have a few challenges ahead.
We still have to take our recycling to Spain, we are
trying to deal with it a bit locally by trying to segregate
it better. We will provide more bins, unfortunately at
times the bins are not properly used. I have resisted
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creating legislation to make it obligatory to use the
correct bins as I think the community is responding
well. I like to work by persuasion and encouragement
but obviously the law is there as a back up. into account I think it is possible to achieve 100%
in Gibraltar however would require quite a bit of
investment, we are exploring all those possibilities
very actively.
How do you think Brexit will impact Gibraltar’s
Environmental policies and plans?
I think Brexit is bad, I believe in the European Vi-
sion. The EU wasn’t working as it could and should
but I believe in changing things from within. I think
the whole issue is a mistake, which will be bad for
UK and Gibraltar although we are working hard to
minimize the negative effect.
Specifically for the environment, we will encoun-
ter challenges and we will work to deal with those.
We have contingency plans that have been devel-
oped and are developing further. As environmental
laws are concerned the government has committed
publically on many occasions that we will not dilute
our Environmental standards. The EU has very good
Environmental standards and we will keep to them.
Where we will differ is when our standards will be
better and not worse so air quality, water quality and
nature conservation will be up there with the best,
that is an absolute commitment. In your opinion what can the local community
do to help the climate crisis we are in and re-
duce their carbon footprint?
They are doing a lot already. The amount of car-
bon emissions has dropped from 2013 – 2018 by
21%. That’s a lot of carbon. It can depend on the
weather, if not too cold or too warm we don’t tend to
switch on air conditioners or heating and therefore
improves. People have now switched to energy effi-
ciency lighting like LED’s. Gibraltar’s street lighting,
government buildings, everything we build, the light-
ing is LED. People are more aware so they tend to
switch off more; it makes a big difference.
There is more solar power popping up. Some
estates are producing their own energy for heating
from solar power and I think more estates should do
that. Saving electricity and water, water uses a lot of
power being produced by reverse osmosis.
Encouraging the use of micro renewables with solar
panels in your own roof. The law has changed so you
can feed extra energy to the grid and get a credit at
the end of the year. All these changes do make a dif-
ference and not just at home but businesses. There is
a big corporate responsibility and businesses are now
increasingly aware and developing green programs re-
ducing their carbon footprints on a daily basis.
As a day-to-day change people could try walking
or cycling more. Electric cars, even hybrid cars make
a huge difference, these are steps in the right di-
rection. The beauty of electric cars, is that not only
does it reduce the carbon footprint but improves air
quality within the urban area. The biggest pollution
problem in our urban area is clearly traffic where it
used to be power generation.
Eating less meat, the meat industry consumes
a lot of energy and produces a lot of methane and
carbon even replaces natural woodland areas. That
would have an impact beyond our shores. Perhaps
trying meat free days a week, which we try and do
at home.
Transport mode and diet are two ways in which
we can make a huge difference.
Could you foresee a day where Gibraltar could
be carbon neutral? Or even a day where Gi-
braltar can be powered solely by renewable
energies?
I think we can be carbon neutral; I am committed to it.
Last week we passed the Climate Change Act,
this commits us to carbon neutrality by 2045.
The Climate Change Emergency Motion passed by
parliament commits us to carbon neutrality by 2030.
I don’t have a problem with having two targets.
One being statutory by law. the other being better
than that requirement.
Its achievable, I think in the early years we will
have to achieve this by offsetting some of our carbon
by buying carbon credits or investing in tree planting
outside Gibraltar, that’s one option we are looking
into, not my preferred option, but done in some parts
of the world.
I believe we can achieve our target of 20% re-
duction by initially using solar energy. We are look-
ing into marine current and wind energy. Taking this
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