Greece plans 2 marine protected areas as part of an $830 million environmental protection program

ATHENS – Greece objectives to create two huge marine parks as part of a 780-million-euro ($830 million) program to offer protection to biodiversity and marine ecosystems, with the plans to be officially introduced at an world oceans convention beginning in Athens Tuesday.

But the plan has irked Greece’s neighbor and regional rival, Turkey, whilst environmental organizations say the initiative does not move a ways sufficient, noting that the rustic additionally lets in environmentally destructive practices such as (*2*) in delicate marine environments.

“We are increasing the size of our marine protected areas by 80%, banning harmful fishing practices and using new technologies to monitor and enforce the commitments we make here,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis stated forward of the convention.

The two-day world assembly being held in Athens objectives “to catalyze global action against two overlapping crises, the climate crisis and the crisis of our ocean,” Mitsotakis stated. “Countries have come with specific proposals to take decisive action.”

With hundreds of islands and islets and one of the longest coastlines within the Mediterranean, Greece has stated it’s going to create one new marine park within the Ionian Sea and one within the Aegean Sea, bringing the whole space of marine protected areas to over 30% of its waters.

But environmental organizations have known as for more potent commitments to environmental protection.

Under a slogan of “The sea is not for sale,” Greenpeace prompt leaders attending the Our Ocean Conference in Athens to take concrete measures to offer protection to the arena’s marine atmosphere.

The convention “must not be simply an opportunity for governments to congratulate themselves for what they have said until now,” stated Nikos Charalambidis, head of Greenpeace in Greece. “On the contrary, this must be where serious steps and action plans are presented to prevent the looting of our seas.”

Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and different organizations have leveled specific complaint at Greece for permitting deep-sea seismic exploration for power and mineral assets within the Hellenic Trench, which incorporates the inner most waters within the Mediterranean at greater than 5,200 meters (17,300 toes).

The trench, which stretches from southwestern Greece to Crete, is an important habitat for the Mediterranean’s few hundred sperm whales and for different marine mammals already threatened through fishing, send collisions and plastic air pollution.

Asked whether or not the Greek executive deliberate to increase protection to the whole lot of the Hellenic Trench, Theodoros Skylakakis, Greece’s minister for each the surroundings and effort, wired that adapting to a inexperienced economic system calls for vital price range over the approaching many years.

“We need to be a lot more efficient in everything we do. And not trigger our reaction by ideology but rather trigger it by science, by efficiency and by investment,” Skylakakis stated. “And for that, we will need money. If anybody thinks we can meet this challenge of paying for the adaptation … and at the same time don’t have economic growth, they don’t live in this world.”

Greece’s plan for the 2 marine parks has additionally irked its neighbor and regional rival Turkey. When the plan was once first of all aired closing week, Turkey’s international ministry accused Athens of exploiting environmental problems to push its geopolitical schedule. The two international locations, each NATO participants, were at odds for decades over a chain of problems, together with territorial claims within the Aegean, and feature reached the threshold of struggle thrice within the closing 50 years.

Relations have advanced slightly over the last 12 months following a length of heightened tensions that noticed the 2 international locations’ warships facing off within the jap Mediterranean. But Ankara replied with annoyance to the plan for a marine park within the Agean.

“It is known that Greece has long been trying to benefit from almost every platform in the context of Aegean problems,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry stated. “Despite the recent softening in our relations, it appears that Greece is exploiting environmental issues this time.”

Greece’s international ministry retorted that Ankara was once “politicizing a clearly environmental issue.”