Friday, June 29, 2007

Burning down the house

We are all watching as the last haven of our capital city is being burned to the ground. The fire began Wednesday afternoon 15 km away from the National Park of Parnitha (a NATURA 2000 site) and reached it yesterday afternoon. There is ash flying all over the city, and the smell is just so scary. There are way too many questions the government and the local authorities will have to answer to.
How timely this is, if one thinks
of the Greek government's plan to amend article 24 of the constitution by inserting an innocuous passage which will allow development in order to meet "public needs", aka opening the door for uncontrolled development in forest areas. This along with the absence of a national cadastre, a forestry inventory and the recently proposed Spatial Planning Framework for Tourism, make all of us working in the environmental field all the more angry and suspicious of our country's "leaders".

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