‘Hurt Not the Trees’: How a Maltese Judge’s Biblical Verdict Saved Sliema’s 90-Year-Old Ficus Line

From the Bench – ‘Hurt Not the Trees’: When Malta’s Courts Became the Last Line of Defence for Our Last Greeneries
By [Hot Malta Staff]

Valletta, Malta – “Hurt not the trees,” wrote Mr Justice Toni Abela in a landmark sentence last week, quoting Revelation 7:3 as he upheld an injunction against a Sliema hotel extension that would have felled 23 mature ficus and carob trees. The phrase—more Sunday sermon than courtroom jargon—has since gone viral, emblazoned on protest T-shirts, WhatsApp stickers and even the side of a Gżira pastry van. In a country where developers have long moved faster than the law, the ruling feels like a cultural earthquake: the bench reminding everyone that Malta’s trees are not collateral décor but co-owners of the deed.

LOCAL CONTEXT: A ROCK STARVED OF SHADE
Malta is the EU’s most densely populated country, adding roughly 3,000 new residents every year. Since 2010 we have lost 35 % of our mature street trees to construction, arterial road-widening and “compensatory” transplanting that sees 80 % of relocated specimens die within three seasons. The Planning Authority’s own 2022 audit warned that the island’s average ambient temperature in July has risen 2.1 °C in two decades, partly because canopy cover is now thinner than Gaza’s. Against this backdrop, the Sliema ficus line—planted by the British in 1928 to shade troops marching to the Strand—had become a sentimental relic, their buttress roots buckling paving stones and café chairs alike. When the five-star AX Holdings project promised a 17-storey glass slab with underground parking, only the environmental NGO Moviment Graffitti objected. Until, that is, the trees found an unlikely ally in a 64-year-old judge who cycles to court past those same ficus every morning.

THE CASE: DAVID VS GOLIATH IN ROBE AND WIG
The injunction hearing lasted 18 minutes, but the written judgement spans 42 pages—part legal treatise, part love letter. Abela invoked Malta’s 2018 Trees & Woodlands Protection Regulations, the European Landscape Convention and even the 1962 Civil Code clause that grants “neighbourhood trees” special status. He rejected the developer’s offer to plant 200 saplings in a Marsa industrial estate, noting that “a 90-year-old tree is not an IKEA lamp, interchangeable and flat-packed.” Most explosively, he ordered the Planning Authority to foot the €50,000 court costs, arguing that its board had “abdicated its custodial role in favour of economic expediency.” For Malta’s cash-strapped NGOs, the ruling is a template: citizens can now sue the state for failing to protect heritage flora, shifting the battle from the streets to the courts.

COMMUNITY IMPACT: COURTYARDS, CANDLES AND CAROB CAKE
Within hours of the judgement, impromptu celebrations erupted under the ficus canopy. Someone strung paper lanterns between the branches; a banda club played ħad gadol; elderly Sliema residents arrived bearing carob cake and stories of courting under the same shade in the ’50s. Café owners reported a 40 % spike in weekend trade as Maltese families—who usually flee the coast to let tourists have it—returned to reclaim their promenade. “Suddenly we remembered the seafront is not just a backdrop for Instagram influencers,” says 28-year-old local Marija Camilleri, who launched “Ħuttaf il-Fjuri”, a citizen-mapping app that logs tree health and illegal pruning. Even the Malta Developers Association struck a conciliatory tone, urging members to “factor mature trees as assets, not obstacles.” Whether this is green-washing or genuine pivot remains to be seen, but applications to uproot protected trees have dropped 60 % in the past fortnight.

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: A SERMON WE NEEDED
Malta’s relationship with nature has always been transactional: trees were tolerated if they yielded olives, carobs or shade for festa benches. Environmentalism was something Germans did. Yet Abela’s biblical flourish tapped a deeper vein. In a nation where 83 % still attend Mass weekly, the language of stewardship resonated far beyond the usual eco-circle. Parish priests have begun quoting the sentence in homilies; Gozitan band clubs are painting “Hurt Not the Trees” on their festa trailers. The phrase has even entered political lexicon: Prime Minister Robert Abela (no relation) told parliament that “no building permit is worth a single century-old tree,” though critics note his government still has 18 active outline applications that threaten protected woodland.

LOOKING AHEAD: WILL THE JUDGEMENT BE A ONE-OFF OR A SEA CHANGE?
The developer has 30 days to appeal, and the PA could still revise its decision. But the bench has handed citizens a sharper sword: any Maltese resident now has locus standi to challenge tree-felling, and courts must apply the “precautionary principle”—meaning the burden of proof shifts to developers to show zero harm. Environmental lawyer Claire Bonello calls it “a Magna Carta for Malta’s lungs.” For a country that builds faster than it breathes, that may be the difference between a liveable island and a sun-bleached rock with balconies.

As the evening breeze rustles the Sliema ficus, Marija Camilleri sums up the mood: “We always thought progress meant concrete. Maybe progress is what we manage not to build.” For once, the trees—and the bench—are on the same side.