Save WILD Greece

Wilderness Committee Educational Report Vol.10 - No.06, Spring 1991

Road building destroys wild nature, despite its physical ruggedness.

Wild nature in peril:

Ancient and modern pressures

Wilderness was sacred to the ancient Greeks. In the wild they felt the presence of their gods. Natural areas - Mt. Olympus, the River Styx, and many others - were sanctified. This early reverence for nature, however, did not prevent ecological degradation as the human population increased and resource extraction expanded.

For thousands of years, people in Greece logged, farmed, and grazed livestock in a relatively balanced relationship with the environment. Pastoral subsistence communities modified, but did not drastically degrade biodiversity. Environmental changes were slow, and natural ecosystems were able to adapt to traditional human pressures. Nevertheless, over time, the seemingly endless forests were largely replaced by extensive goat-grazed scrublands. Wild nature survived only in the rugged, remote, uninhabited areas.

The most abrupt and destructive pressures against the environment in Greece began only a few decades ago. The reckless and poorly planned use of modern industrial technology has compounded traditional human impacts. The herds of tree-eating goats have been joined by bulldozers, agrochemicals, and massive, profit-driven development schemes.

These land-use changes have rapidly degraded both rural subsistence economies and the environment. The pastoral ways are being replaced by industry. Scores of mountain villages have been abandoned as the overcrowded cities have grown. The ignorant destruction of natural ecosystems and environmental changes, including increased pollution, resulting from the intensification of urban, industrial, and agricultural developments, have become widespread.

Unchecked tourism and urban development sprawl. A small wetland habitat in the foreground has been converted to a dump.

Since Greece entered the European Community (EC) in 1981, there has been an even greater rate of expansion of industry and intensification of resource exploitation. Over the last few years, EC-funded development projects that aimed to help Greece's economy, such as the "Integrated Mediterranean Programmes", have in fact helped to destroy even some existing protected natural areas. The injection of large sums of development aid money in the form of "structural funds" continues to facilitate the destruction of wild nature.

For instance:

  • The EC-funded irrigation project within Prespa National Park caused extensive tree-clearing and diking, and has severely disrupted the hydrology of this unique wetland.

  • EC-funded intensive fish farming units and dike construction are destroying the central core of the great Amvrakikos Gulf wetland.

    The spiritual reverence for nature has been lost.

  • The EC has recently increased its funding to quicken development of the economically least developed parts of the European Community. Many of the regions concerned have delicate environments that are easily damaged by poorly planned or misplaced forms of development. Large-scale use of "structural funds" threatens to disrupt fragile traditional communities and remnant natural ecosystems in rural and more remote parts of Greece. These funds are helping to finance a number of environmentally damaging projects, including large-scale dams and river diversions, misplaced agricultural intensification (replacing traditional crops with monocultures in environmentally sensitive areas), inappropriate tree plantations, fish farm projects, and mass tourism development within environmentally sensitive areas.

  • EC aid is often put into hastily executed infrastructure projects, many of them proposed mainly to attract European Community funding. Much EC funding is being used to create an extensive myriad of roads within natural areas. These roads, some of which are essentially useless, are initiating the most penetrating and widespread destruction of wild nature. The roads unleash severe erosion, fragment plant communities, and displace wildlife. They facilitate increased human pressure within previously natural areas: over-hunting, forest fires, illegal logging, mining exploration, and uncontrolled tourism developments.

  • The imprudent use of EC funding by the Greek government is irreversibly degrading many ecologically sensitive areas, often in blatant contravention of the EC's own environmental laws.