Greece will invest $830 million to protect marine biodiversity

Greece aims to create two large marine parks as part of a 780-million-euro ($830 million) program to protect biodiversity and marine ecosystems, with the plans to be formally announced at an international oceans conference starting in Athens on Tuesday.

But the plan has irked Greece’s neighbor and regional rival, Turkey, while environmental organizations say the initiative doesn’t go far enough, noting that the country also allows environmentally harmful practices such as energy exploration in sensitive 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 said ahead of the conference.

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

With thousands of islands and islets and one of the longest coastlines in the Mediterranean, Greece has said it will create one new marine park in the Ionian Sea and one in the Aegean Sea, bringing the total area of marine protected areas to over 30% of its waters.

However environmental organizations have called for stronger commitments to environmental protection.

Under the slogan “The sea is not for sale,” Greenpeace urged leaders attending the Our Ocean Conference in Athens to take concrete measures to protect the world’s marine environment.

The conference “must not be simply an opportunity for governments to congratulate themselves for what they have said until now,” said 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 other organizations have leveled particular criticism at Greece for allowing deep-sea seismic exploration for energy and mineral resources in the Hellenic Trench, which includes the deepest waters in the Mediterranean at more than 5,200 meters (17,300 feet).

Read more at thenationalherald.com

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