Maria Margaronis' article on the burnt forest lands of southern Greece.
KALAMOS BOOKS
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2007 12:33 PM
Subject: Re: δαση
A strange autumn has come to the hillsides of Ileia in the
western Peloponnese. The olive trees, normally evergreen, have turned a
papery gold; the pines are a blaze of red as if they were still burning. As
you climb further up the colour drains away: there's nothing but charred
trees, black stumps against black earth, and the occasional clump of waxy
asphodel. "This is a biblical catastrophe," Yiannis Poulis keeps repeating
as we drive through burnt woods around his village, Graika. "This is the
Place of the Skull."
The fires that ravaged Greece this summer took 67 lives and some
642,500 acres of forest and farm land, thousands of houses and barns, and
countless people's hopes and livelihoods, foreshortening the future and
wiping out the past. A tenth of Greece's forest cover is gone; large tracts
of countryside are at risk of depopulation. "These wounds will never heal,"
Mr. Poulis mourns. "There are a few young men in the village, but I'm
seventy. Am I going to plant my olives all over again?"
For others, though—like the two men at breakfast in my hotel who
asked the names of the burnt villages and wouldn't say what they were doing
there--catastrophe means opportunity. "You wait and see," says Margarita, a
local magistrate. "Lots of people will get rich from this disaster, just
like in the Kalamata earthquake of 1982."
Now that the world's eyes have turned away, the Peloponnese is
facing its own moment of what the writer Naomi Klein has called "disaster
capitalism". The scale may be smaller but the pattern is familiar:
ineptitude and slowness on the part of the government, as in Sri Lanka after
the tsunami; private initiatives, as in New Orleans, rushing in to fill the
gap; corrupt officials seizing the chance to push forward pet schemes.
Talking to people in Ileia you learn what the process feels like on the
receiving end: bewilderment and frustration at the lack of help, conflicting
rumours about corporate plans, arguments, anxiety, a sense of powerlessness.
"We're all in shock still," says Maria Pothou in the village of Makistos.
"And yet we have to organise ourselves and try to make decisions."
No disaster happens in a vacuum. Before the fires Ileia—a
fertile but poor olive-growing region--was already caught up in an argument
about development. The pristine beaches of the western Peloponnese top the
New Democracy government's list of sites for "integrated resort
tourism"--massive complexes like the billion-euro Navarino Resort now under
construction in Messinia a few miles to the south, which will boast eleven
hotels, seven golf courses and 77,500 square metres of second homes. But
many residents want a different model—smaller scale, locally owned hotels
selling quality rather than quantity, whose profits would stay in the area
rather than line the pockets of big players in the leisure industry.
Besides, much of Ileia's shore, with its dense greenery stretching right
down to the dunes, is legally protected from large building projects under
the EU's Natura 2000 conservation network.
Nevertheless, a month before the fires, the government signed a
2.8 billion euro contract for a motorway that will rim Ileia's coast. The
consortium of companies building the road will collect the tolls for thirty
years to come; some of the same firms are involved in the Navarino project.
The motorway is planned to run right through Kaiaphas, the jewel in Ileia's
crown, which is also part of Natura: a unique lake and wetland divided from
the dunes by a long narrow forest of tall pines. On the evening of August
24th, the worst day of the fires, Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis came to
the region and promised that Kaiaphas would not burn. But by the following
afternoon no fire planes had appeared. The forest—unthreatened the day
before—had been overwhelmed by flames.
Many people in Ileia believe the fires were set or left to
spread deliberately to pave the way for the developers. There is no evidence
for these accusations: in that white-hot week in August all the conditions
were right for a perfect firestorm. But every conspiracy theory contains a
grain of truth. Arson is common in other parts of Greece; although the law
mandates reforestation, graft is widespread and such rules are easily
circumvented. And now that Ileia's farming economy has effectively
collapsed, the argument for rapid development has gained new facts on the
ground—as well as a new influx of funds for "restoration" projects.
Up in the villages, the most conspicuous symptom of what's going
on is the absence of government aid. For all the lip-service paid to
preventing depopulation, Athens doesn't seem too concerned about the fate of
what was, after all, a shrinking sector of the economy. After an initial
hand-out before the September election no funds have materialised for
victims of the fire; the compensation being offered for burnt olive trees is
less than a fifth of what their oil would bring. Six weeks after the blaze
the prefabs sent to house the homeless still have no water, no toilets and
no electricity. The springs are contaminated; there's no feed for livestock
that have lost their grazing land. Down by the main road backhoes are
digging drainage ditches, but up here, flood prevention and anti-erosion
work has barely been begun.
Coordinating and financing reconstruction on this scale would
challenge any government. But it's hard to avoid the sense that Athens is
being selective in its contacts with local officials, preferring to work
directly with the corporations. Haralambos Kafyras, head of the prefecture,
apologises for yawning as we speak; he's been at his desk, he says, since
5.30 that morning. "We were sent a million euros at the start, to which we
added 800,000 of our own for flood prevention. I've asked for 13 million
more, but nothing has come yet. We want to establish an independent
government agency with local representation to manage the reconstruction. We
don't want scattered efforts; we don't want to deal with big financial
interests. We want to deal with the state." But a spokesman for the Ministry
for the Environment, Planning and Public Works tells me that all the flood
defence works are being done for free by Greece's major construction
companies—the same ones that will build the motorway. What about the work
being done by the prefecture of Ileia? "That will be other, local work,
undertaken in parallel."
Private companies have a necessary role in any reconstruction,
and many of Greece's businesses have responded generously. But without
coordination or accountability the needs of local people tend to go
unheard—and it can be hard to distinguish magnanimity from PR or
profiteering. Makistos was right in the path of the flames as they roared
down the mountain: seven people burned to death here trying to escape. In
the café which is also her parents' home Dimitra Kokkaliari shows me
pictures of how Makistos used to be: stone houses cradled in green. It's
been a stressful day. In the evening there'll be a memorial service for the
dead; that morning engineers sent by the Vardinoyiannis family, who own one
of Greece's largest energy companies, were in the village measuring and
surveying. Marianna Vardinoyiannis, a member of the family who runs a
charity, has "adopted" Makistos; the villagers first found out when her plan
was announced on TV. They're very grateful, but the offer brings tensions
too. No-one has come from the company to ask them what they need; some of
them are afraid to speak in case the donors leave. A plan to hold a public
meeting with elected officials, company representatives and a team of
architects from the National Technical University of Athens has been
abandoned after an intervention by the mayor of the municipality; a rumour
was put about that the organisers wanted to reject the Vardinoyiannis offer.
The mayor, Pantazis Chronopoulos, understands the importance of
gifts. Outside his office and above his desk in the seaside town of Zacharo
a sign spells out his philosophy: "There is no surer enemy than the
ungrateful beneficiary." "You will write," he tells me, "that the solidarity
has been enormous, from the smallest Greek with one euro to spare to the
very biggest." Flipping through stacks of business cards he lists the
promises Zacharo has received after his many television appearances: from
Nokia and Proton Bank, Alpha Insurance and Folli Follie Accessories, the
Republic of Cyprus and the Olympiakos football team. He says that Greece's
Skai TV is going to set up a station in Zacharo and broadcast daily
bulletins about the reconstruction; Al Gore's secretary has agreed to build
a climate change centre on the Zacharo beach.
Not all the mayor's claims check out: according to Al Gore's
office, neither the Senator nor any representative of his has spoken with
Mr. Chronopoulos or visited Ileia. But there must be money to spare from
fire relief and flood prevention works, because the mayor also tells me he
has just received the drawings for a new road from Zacharo to Andritsaina, a
historic town in the mountains; the work will be put to tender within the
month. ("Build it now, mayor, build it quickly," urges one of the muscled
young men who gather round him in the Zacharo square, "through the burnt
places, or it'll never happen.") The mayor says all the environmental
studies are in place, but neither the Ministry in Athens nor the regional
administration nor the governor of the prefecture have heard of the plan
until I mention it. The road is designed to pass near Makistos and
Chrysochori, a village where Mr. Chronopoulos is offering to give away for
development 200 plots of public land over the internet.
Mr. Chronopoulos' critics call him Al Capone, the Sheriff and
Corleone, but he was re-elected in 2006 with 52% of the vote. (His campaign
featured a trip to Russia with a posse of Zacharo bachelors eager to find
brides, immortalised in a hit documentary called Sugartown.) He clearly has
friends in high places: In September, after the fires and a few days before
Greece's general election, he signed a deal with a deputy finance minister
which gave Zacharo the right to develop several miles of publicly owned
coast, most of it protected under the Natura network. After the vote the
Environment Minister hastened to reassure the press that the deal was still
under review. But if you go down to the Zacharo beach you can see fresh
tractor marks where, since the fires, an illegal road is being marked out
and extended day by day, flattening the dunes, tearing up the rare lilies
that hold them, destroying the nesting grounds of the endangered loggerhead
sea turtle.
Spain recently began demolishing the illegal buildings that
disfigure its beaches. But in Greece, such violations tend to go
unpunished—especially as the mayor's idea of reconstruction and development
goes hand in glove with the government's. Both give priority to corporate
investment at the expense of accountability; both pay lip service to
conservation while seeing it as an obstacle to economic growth. (As the
mayor puts it, "What are we going to do here, conjugate the verb 'I'm
hungry'?") And both are taking the fires as an opportunity not to restore
and build on what's been lost but to push through the rapid capitalisation
of the region's natural resources, regardless of the human and environmental
cost.
Above all Mr. Chronopoulos is an enthusiastic booster of the
motorway, even though the plan to be rubber-stamped by parliament this
autumn will slice Zacharo in two, running between the town centre and the
beach through an area of lush fruit trees, houses and small hotels. In fact
the Zacharo council—including the mayor—voted unanimously against this route
last year; it's also opposed by the prefectural council. Since then though
Mr. Chronopoulos has changed his tune, insisting there's no feasible
alternative. The Ministry of the Environment and Public Works agrees:
"Economically, practically, environmentally, this is the best solution. A
road further inland would not serve the same places. The road will change
the fortunes of the region. There are plans to develop tourism in the whole
area; there is already interest from investors."
Ileia's sandy beach stretches for miles and miles. With care and
planning there ought to be room on it for dunes, sand lilies, turtles and
humans too. Reforested and with its three old spa hotels restored to their
1930s splendour, Kaiaphas would make an ideal national park, a perfect spot
for high-end boutique tourism. To build a motorway through it—even partly
underground--seems perverse and counterproductive: who will want to visit
paradise once it's paved?
The fires have speeded up the destruction of places like
Kaiaphas with a finality barely imaginable a few months ago: a precarious
balance has been decisively tilted. Now that Ileia's faltering economy is
thoroughly devastated, drastic solutions look far more
persuasive--especially when the companies that will implement them have
contributed so generously to the "reconstruction" effort.
The catastrophe has also galvanised environmentalists, who say
that the motorway plan is illegal Kaiaphas' delicate ecosystems are doubly
protected under both Greek and European law now that they need to recover
from the blaze. With the help of Michael Dekleris, former deputy president
of Greece's constitutional court, a group from Zacharo has filed a motion to
halt construction; if necessary they plan to take the case to the European
Court. EU rules mandate a detailed consultation process before a road can be
built through a Natura region; the Ministry in Athens seems unaware of this
requirement.
But like the villagers and small hoteliers trying to rescue
their old life, the environmentalists are up against a formidable complex of
political and business interests. In Greece the state's profound
disorganisation has always gone hand in hand with political patronage,
leaving a useful vacuum where private interests and corruption flourish;
there is little to keep the corporate development juggernaut from roaring
through the Peloponnese in the wake of the flames. Of course, the same is
true of most of the world's less developed regions—exactly the ones most
vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
================================
June Samaras
KALAMOS BOOKS
(For Books about Greece)
2020 Old Station Rd
Streetsville,Ontario
Canada L5M 2V1
Tel : 905-542-1877
E-mail : kalamo...@gmail.com
www.kalamosbooks.com
Constantine buhayer
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/printthread.php/Cat/0/Board/EarthEnviro/main/984232/type/thread
During her visit to London last November, the Greek foreign minister said that there were going to be more fires this summer.
CB
--
The University of Westminster is a charity and a company limited by
guarantee. Registration number: 977818 England. Registered Office:
309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW, UK.