Greece options 2 marine safeguarded regions. But rival Turkey and environmental groups aren’t impressed
ATHENS, Greece — Greece aims to develop two huge marine parks as aspect of a 780-million-euro plan to shield biodiversity and maritime ecosystems, with the options to be declared at an worldwide oceans meeting starting off in Athens on Tuesday.
But the strategy has irked Greece’s neighbor and regional rival, Turkey, whilst environmental businesses say the initiative doesn’t go much sufficient, noting that the country also lets environmentally unsafe techniques these types of as electrical power exploration in delicate marine environments.
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“We are escalating the dimensions of our maritime safeguarded parts by 80%, banning destructive fishing tactics and making use of new systems to keep track of and enforce the commitments we make in this article,” Primary Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis reported in advance of the meeting.
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The two-working day assembly in Athens aims “to catalyze international action in opposition to two overlapping crises, the local climate disaster and the disaster of our ocean,” Mitsotakis claimed. “Countries have come with unique proposals to get decisive action.”
About 300 reps from extra than 100 nations and global corporations are participating, Greek federal government officers claimed, with bulletins set for new commitments amounting to about $10 billion for natural environment-similar initiatives.
With thousands of islands and islets and 1 of the Mediterranean’s longest coastlines, Greece has claimed it will make a single new maritime park in the Ionian Sea and a single in the Aegean Sea, bringing the overall of marine safeguarded locations to more than 30% of its waters.
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But environmental organizations have identified as for stronger commitments.
Beneath a slogan of “the sea is not for sale,” Greenpeace urged leaders attending the Our Ocean Conference to acquire concrete actions to guard maritime environments.
The meeting “must not be simply just an possibility for governments to congratulate by themselves for what they have said right up until now,” claimed Nikos Charalambidis, head of Greenpeace in Greece.
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Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and other companies have leveled individual criticism at Greece for letting deep-sea seismic exploration for electrical power and mineral means in the Hellenic Trench, which involves the deepest waters in the Mediterranean at far more than 5,200 meters .
The trench, which stretches from southwestern Greece to Crete, is a very important habitat for the Mediterranean’s couple of hundred sperm whales and other marine mammals previously threatened by fishing, ship collisions and plastic air pollution.
Requested whether or not the Greek govt planned to extend defense to the entirety of the Hellenic Trench, Theodoros Skylakakis, Greece’s minister for the two the environment and energy, stressed that adapting to a inexperienced economic climate demands considerable funds more than the coming a long time.
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“We require to be a ton a lot more efficient in everything we do. And not trigger our reaction by ideology but fairly trigger it by science, by performance and by investment,” Skylakakis stated. “And for that, we will want funds. If anybody thinks we can fulfill this problem of spending for the adaptation … and at the similar time never have financial advancement, they never reside in this planet.”
Greece’s approach for the two maritime parks also has irked Turkey. When the approach was aired previous week, Turkey’s overseas ministry accused Athens of exploiting environmental challenges to push its geopolitical agenda. The countries, the two NATO customers, have been at odds for a long time more than a variety of concerns, such as territorial claims in the Aegean, and have achieved the brink of war 3 periods in the past 50 years.
Relations have enhanced somewhat around the previous yr pursuing a interval of heightened tensions that noticed the countries’ warships encounter off in the japanese Mediterranean. But Ankara responded with annoyance to Greece’s system for a marine park in the Agean.
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“It is recognized that Greece has extended been striving to advantage from pretty much just about every platform in the context of Aegean issues,” the Turkish International Ministry said. “Despite the new softening in our relations, it appears that Greece is exploiting environmental problems this time.”
Greece’s foreign ministry retorted that Ankara was “politicizing a evidently environmental challenge.”
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