ABOUT
This viral video was made to raise awareness, within Greece and worldwide, about the severe long-term consequences for the environment and society occurring from the exploitation of our coasts, beaches/ sea shores and, about how today´s political decisions will impact the future of this and the next generations.
In the year 2014, against the backdrop of the Greek crisis and austerity measures, a new legislation proposed by the Greek government opened the road for the privatization and the consequent utter exploitation of the entirety of Greek coasts, beaches and shores. Despite huge public outcry, which succeeded in stopping the acceptance of the bill momentarily, laws were passed through different amendments of other laws and our natural inheritance is still under threat.
Since then several beaches and shores have been sold to the private sector by the government of SYRIZA, via TAIPED (Hellenic Republic Assessment Fund) as part of the austerity measures plan to avoid a default, regardless.
Today, large parts of the Greek coasts are facing huge and irreversible degradation and environmental destruction, by being literally donated, with minimal or no fees, to private interests with inadequate provisions to preserve their important and protected status. There is no protection from the state and a huge disregard that, public property is not property of the state to sell off, but is the responsibility of the state to protect it, along with individuals and the wider community.
Now Greece is promoting obsolete economic and development models encouraging monumental buildings, with huge environmental impacts and massive environmental footprints, instead of a sustainable, natural and scaled-down paradigm for tourism, and coastal development, which is proven as the only way to go forward for a sustainable future on planet earth.
The issue
The rich, but now threatened, biodiversity of the coastal areas is at peril. Legally protected areas are being converted into lots for sale, leading to the irreversible degradation of natural resources, species and habitats, with serious environmental and health consequences.
Humanity is tied to nature, since its very first erect steps. This strong bond is even more evident with the seas and the ocean, cradle of life that provides the livelihoods to billions of people throughout the world.
For Greece, a country with vast coastlines of more than 15,000 kilometres, the sea constitutes a unique and intrinsic value for life and wellbeing. The shores and coasts, boundaries between the land and the sea, a constant refuge where serenity and peace are always present regenerating the vital energy necessary for human beings.
This unique element is also the habitat of millions of life forms, birds, marine mammals, plants, and other organisms. Our coastlines constitute an unequalled natural ecosystem necessary to be preserved at any financial cost. The short term financial gains made through its reckless wholesale become an irrelevance when compared to how much will need to be invested in the long term to try and repair the damage done, and many areas and species may never recover. Sadly, modern societies today are seeking contact with nature in ways that destroy its very own value, through intoxicating means and destructive ways of an unsustainable economic and social model. Despite this current gloomy status, there is always an alternative option to choose from, follow and cultivate. In order to reverse and ensure the preservation of the coasts, it is essential to prioritise the environment above any profit. We are nature; while we abuse her and destroy her, we destroy ourselves. By degrading the delicately balanced ecosystems along our shores we also decrease and devalue the financial worth of the coastlines. We need to understand that there is no economy without nature.
The current developmental model that is promoted in Greece and worldwide demands massive constructions of huge hotels and other coastal buildings, countless beach beds, bars and clubs of extreme noise and light pollution. In practice this outdated developmental model has already proved to be counterproductive and unsuccessful. We can look at many global examples to prove this or we can take one from our own Mediterranean region such as Benidorm in Spain. During the 1970s huge investments were directed towards massive costal building development in the Benidorm area for the sake of tourism. Such large-scale construction projects have actually lead to the opposite results regarding the expected economic profits, due to the destructive environmental degradation brought along with them. Today Spain is demolishing such structures from its shores and is investing in sustainable, natural, small-scale and green developmental projects. An important aspect of protecting and preserving the shores, and reducing heavy environmental impacts is to build all constructions a safe distance from the coastline, where all vulnerable and affected habitats, organisms and ecosystems are found. In Greece all coasts, and shores, either beaches or cliffs are not only available for the public, but also of public property. The Greek state is called to assume the role of its guardian, not of its owner.
Learn More
The coastline is a unique element of natural ecosystems, it is the boundary between the sea and the land and its importance is paramount. This website is about our freedom to use and have open access to the beaches of Greece, the Mediterranean and worldwide and about the intrinsic value of our natural environment. The Greek landscape is an integral part of our identity and a global point of reference as a ´natural paradise´. Illegal buildings, litter, and other abusive practises towards the natural environment are some of the problems our seashore faces and they require strategic thinking and coordinated actions to overcome.
During the summer of 2014 the Greek government prepared a bill to actually sell off public beaches and shores to private companies and other investors and move on towards the privatization of the Greek coastline targeting for cemented, overdeveloped beaches with limited access to those who cannot afford it. A few years before this similar political decisions in Spain have led to an environmentally and economically disastrous model that damaged much more than the short benefits of some construction companies, and led to bad quality of tourism that corrupted the tourist industry (all inclusive tourist packages are one of such examples) and most of the natural environment of the coasts. In case the above model will be applied in Greece, it will diminish the main reason for a visitor to chose Greece as a destination: it´s pristine beaches. A public outcry, online petitions and the urgent demands of civil society and environmental NGOs have managed to avoid the voting of this bill in 2014. However key parts of this cruel legislation were isolated and are still being incorporated in several other legislations that are voted in the context of the austerity measures that the Greek government is obliged to take by its lenders.
Thus the original bill is indirectly and partially implemented. This fact creates currently an unprecedented promotion of an extreme simplification and deregulation of the issuing of building permits. As a result more and more beachside hotels are appearing all along our seashore, while numerous businesses are paying small fines to legalize buildings deemed illicit and to be demolished, permitting vendors to litter shorelines with umbrellas and sunbeds, limiting access to public beaches and destroy their sole intrinsic value: their natural beauty.
Using monetary profits as legitimation, Greek ministries have launched a concerted legislative barrage resulting in:
- Constantly undermining the environmental impact assessment and licensing system, the conservation framework for protected natural habitats and areas (such as national parks and the Natura 2000 sites, etc.) with provisions favoring specific types of investments, primarily holiday resorts and new tourist villages.
- The privatization and sell off of publicly owned land through the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund of ecologically significant and legally protected areas, many of which have been designated as Natura 2000 sites, under the guise of easing the path for development of vacation homes and tourism resorts.
- The overhaul of the spatial planning framework in order to allow the rapid approval of large investments, primarily in the area of tourism, contrary to specific or local land use and nature protection rules.
Vangelis Paravas, former president of the Society for the Study and Protection of the Monk Seal (MOm) highlighted the vital role played by Greece’s natural environment, especially in the coastal areas, providing shelter for more than half of the world population of the Mediterranean monk seal Monachus monachus, an endangered marine mammal species according to IUCN. This charismatic species also provide another example of what could lie ahead for us as their dwindling numbers is caused by, among other things, the extensive, unregulated, and un-sustainable coastal development, which has destroyed the terrestrial habitat of this species and decimated its numbers. Destroying their natural habitat for two-week luxury vacations dooms us to a shared catastrophe.