Malta's tree deficit

Look at any Europe-wide chart on forest cover and Malta appears as an outlier. In 2020, just 1 percent of the country’s territory was classified as forested. Even the second-lowest EU member state, the Netherlands, registered 10 percent. Most of Europe sits far above that. Finland tops the list at 66 percent; Slovenia and Latvia exceed 50 percent. Malta stands alone at the bottom.

The graphic is striking, but a sceptic, including this author, might argue that such comparisons are unfair. Malta is a microstate. A national statistic tells us little about the ecological reality of an island where urbanisation occupies most of the land. Small countries often look worse on national metrics because they lack the expansive hinterlands that inflate forest cover in places such as Sweden and Slovenia.

The Netherlands is a case in point. It ranks poorly at national level, yet its urban areas are among the most park-rich, water-rich and tree-lined in Europe. Dutch cities like Utrecht, Groningen and Nijmegen score highly on urban greening indicators even though the country as a whole does not. The argument is simple: judge microstates and dense territories the same way you judge the Netherlands, by looking at their cities, not their borders.

To test that logic, we turned to a large dataset covering hundreds of European urban areas, including the variables tree cover and urban blue space. This allows comparisons between functional urban areas across Europe, regardless of national size. It strips out the advantage that countries with large rural areas enjoy in national statistics. And it gives a fairer benchmark for Malta, where the majority of the population lives in a continuous urban belt.

Yet once we look at the city-level numbers, the sceptic’s defence begins to collapse.

Malta’s primary urban area records just over 6 percent tree cover within its functional boundary. That places it at amongst those at the bottom of the European ranking, not because of its size but because trees are genuinely scarce within the built environment. By contrast, Dutch cities score significantly higher. Rotterdam sits near 18 percent tree cover; Amsterdam at around 10 percent; Utrecht above 20 percent; Groningen close to 10 percent with extensive green corridors and canals that are also captured in urban-blue metrics. These numbers are well above Malta’s.

Mediterranean peers also outperform Malta. Valencia, Palermo, Barcelona and Naples all report substantially higher levels of urban tree canopy. Even coastal cities with similar densities manage to integrate greenery more effectively into the urban street grid. Climate alone does not explain Malta’s low ranking.

The structural reasons are more straightforward. A combination of fragmented land ownership, narrow streets within historic cores and decades of car-centred planning has left little space for tree cover to develop. Where other cities used boulevards, waterfronts and mixed-use developments to incorporate greenery, Malta typically allocated scarce space to on-street parking, wider traffic corridors and private development footprints.

It is also true that Malta’s native ecology is dominated by shrubland rather than tall canopy trees. This legitimately depresses its forest cover in national statistics. But it does not explain the very low levels of urban tree cover. Over the past half-century, most Southern European cities have created urban microclimates by planting non-native but climate-appropriate species. The issue, therefore, is not ecological inevitability. It is urban design.

Recognising this shifts the debate onto more difficult terrain. Planting more trees is not a simple, cost-free intervention. In a country where every square metre is contested, increasing tree cover requires reallocating space. And reallocating space implies political trade-offs.

If Malta wants shade corridors, stormwater retention and cooler streets, it will need to widen pavements, restructure roads and remove physical obstacles. That often means one thing: less room for cars. Even policymakers and environmental advocates who champion urban greening tend to avoid stating this openly. The spatial need is unavoidable. A mature tree requires soil volume, setbacks, and long-term root space. These cannot be created without displacing something else.

This is why urban greening is ultimately a political challenge rather than a green one. It forces a conversation about what Maltese cities should prioritise when space is limited. Are residents prepared to accept fewer on-street parking spaces so that pavements can be widened for trees? Are they willing to see traffic lanes narrowed or redesigned to create shade corridors and storm-water buffers? And beyond transport, are communities ready for the idea that new parks or continuous green links may require the state to acquire privately owned plots that were once earmarked for development? These choices test not only political will but public expectations about what urban space is for, and how much change they are willing to accept in exchange for a cooler, greener city.

Malta can continue to score at the bottom of Europe’s tree-cover rankings and treat this as a quirk of geography. Or it can confront the real reason the country has so few trees: space has been allocated to other priorities.

The data suggests the choice is no longer cosmetic. As temperatures rise and the costs of heat stress, runoff and air pollution increase, greenery becomes infrastructure. And infrastructure requires decisions that are neither easy nor popular. A greener Malta is possible. But it will demand sacrifices that even its strongest advocates may resist.