A major Greek court ruling has put the final nail in the coffin for planned power plant Meliti II, and left its sister plant Meliti I operating without legal permission. The decision follows a legal challenge brought, WWF Greece and Greenpeace Greece, by ClientEarth. Greece’s supreme administrative court, the Greek Council of State, has annulled...
Read more...The commitments announced by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the UN Climate Action Summit, that Greece will shut down all lignite power plants by 2028 and ban single-use plastics by 2021, are welcomed by WWF Greece as bold steps towards reducing the country’s environmental footprint. For Greece, the phase out of lignite needs to be part o...
Read more...Imagine a world where drilling thousands of shotholes for the use of explosives in protected areas, vegetation clearing, opening of roads, and near lethal disturbance of protected animals at sea is not subject to the appropriate assessment of environmental impacts. This is modern day Greece, allowing an unprecedented rollback on established legal p...
Read more...GLAND, Switzerland, 11th February 2019 – WWF today published a report on the ‘Economic impacts of hydrocarbon exploitation in Greece’ as part of the launch of its international campaign to halt oil and gas drilling plans in the country. The study, commissioned by WWF and conducted by eftec, finds that a major oil spill in Greece would devasta...
Read more...WWF & Greenpeace address EU Commissioners on the opening of Greece’s lignite market The big lignite sale now happening in Greece, under supervision and pressure by the European Commission, prolongs the country’s dependence on dirty coal and negates the EU’s policies for coal phase-out. Under the umbrella of antitrust EU rules, the Eur...
Read more...A year marked by Greece’s addiction to fossil fuels has resulted in seriously undermining the country’s system of environmental protection, according to WWF Greece. The 14th annual report of WWF Greece “Environmental law in Greece”, which was published in December 2018 (in Greek), highlights a number of serious shortcomings and rollbacks o...
Read more...In its original meaning of the Greek word κρίσις, a crisis is not just about a dramatic state of affairs, but also about judgment and choice. Gloom and decision are the two faces of the same coin. The current crisis is indeed leaving a heavy footprint on both nature and society. But it should also be viewed as a call for decisive action.
This past month has revealed serious challenges to the EU’s corpus of green policies and reluctance for truly sustainable ways out of the crisis.
The Multi-Annual Framework for the period 2014-2020 that received its final approval by the European Parliament is in essence an environmental and social austerity budget. In the UK, David Cameron’s administration is retreating from its promise “to lead the greenest government ever” and fears grow that important nature legislation will be undermined. In Spain, the oil drilling frenzy is threatening iconic biodiversity hotspots in the Canaries. Unfortunately, this environmental rollback does not only concern the EU: the failure of the COP19 of the UN’s Climate Change Convention to substantially speed up retarded international action on climate change, coupled with the refusal of Canada and Australia to provide developing nations with financial support that will help them cope with climate change, makes it clear that the crisis is now a global excuse for no change to the dominant dirty economic paradigm.
The most accountable promise for a living future comes from civil society: environmental groups and thousands of alarmed citizens protest against policies and plans that undermine Europe’s natural treasury and demand smart and sustainable policies that will set the foundations for living economies.
Theodota Nantsou, WWF Greece & Isabella Pratesi, WWF Italy