August-September 2012 editorial
Welcome back! We hope your summer holidays were refreshing enough to help the network cope with a politically hot winter!
Greece still struggling to stay in the euro, Spain getting closer to a full and painful bailout programme and all eyes focused on the ECB’s intervention to save the Eurozone from breaking apart, the environment is clearly drifting away from the policy and economic priorities of most EU member states.
The two countries most troubled by the crisis went through a summer that was not only politically, but also literally hot: Spain and Greece lost over 200,000 hectares of woodland to fierce wildfires, which their understaffed and under-resourced Fire Brigade services had difficulty combating. Important developments analysed in this issue relate to energy and the crisis looming over the sector of renewables, the shrinkage of Greece’s protected areas system, as well as the introduction by France of a worth noting tax on financial transactions (FTT), the revenues from which may be partly allocated to fund climate policies.
We sincerely hope you find this e-bulletin interesting and useful to your work and please share with us any information which you consider relevant.
Theodota Nantsou (WWF Greece) and Isabella Pratesi (WWF Italy)