After debt crisis, Greek economy faces climate change threats

Record ID: 1644856

  • Title: After debt crisis, Greek economy faces climate change threats
  • Date: 4th November 2021
  • Summary: YAKUTIA, RUSSIA (FILE - SEPTEMBER 12, 2021) (REUTERS) ENVIRONMENT RESEARCHER, HEAD OF PLEISTOCENE PARK, NIKITA ZIMOV PICKING UP MAMMOTH'S BONE, SAYING (Russian) "It's a mammoth's leg. It's not very big, of average size. But it's a good one." VARIOUS OF MAMMOTH'S BONE IN RIVER ZIMOV WALKING, PICKING UP FRAGMENT OF MAMMOTH'S TUSK, SAYING (Russian) "Oh, a preserved piece of t
  • Embargoed: 18th November 2021 10:16
  • Keywords: Greece climate change coasts fires floods heatwaves scientists studies tourism
  • Location: ATHENS, CORFU, HALKIDIKI, AITOLIKO, EVIA, PIERIA, THESSALONIKI, GREECE
  • City: ATHENS, CORFU, HALKIDIKI, AITOLIKO, EVIA, PIERIA, THESSALONIKI, GREECE
  • Country: Greece
  • Topics: Climate Change,Climate Finance,Environment,Europe,General News
  • Reuters ID: LVA009F26O0UF
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Strolling along the coast of Nea Irakleia village where he would go swimming as a young man, community leader George Perperis points to where there was once a beach, now submerged by seawater.
    "There was a 20 metre-wide beach here that has completely vanished in the last years, " says Perperis, 59.
    Accelerating coastal erosion and rising sea levels due to climate change pose an existential threat to places such as Nea Irakleia in western Halkidiki, a tourist hotspot in northern Greece of lush forests and golden sands.
    The region was one of those worst-hit by the financial crisis that ravaged Greece from 2010 to 2018, shrinking the economy by a third and tipping many into poverty.
    After a crisis and a pandemic, Perperis worries climate change may now drive tourists away.
    "If a foreigner comes, what will there be for him to see here?" he says of the submerged beach.
    Experts say coastal erosion at Halkidiki, which attracts about 10% of Greece's annual 30 million visitors, has intensified in the recent years.
    Authorities at an observatory set up in Thessaloniki to monitor the phenomenon using satellite photos, sea floats and algorithms, have identified eighteen areas they call "red points" in the region that show intense coastal vulnerability.
    "We see on many occasions beaches literally vanishing, beaches ten metres long disappearing," said Costas Gioutikas, vice-prefect for the environment in the region of central Macedonia.
    On the night of July 11, 2019, at least seven people were killed and more than 100 hurt from a violent, short-lived "supercell" freak storm that lashed a tourist area of Nea Plagia in Halkidiki, damaging buildings, overturning motorhomes, beach chairs and umbrellas on the beach.
    Before the pandemic, tourism accounted for about a fifth of Greece's economy and a similar proportion of jobs, earning revenue of 18 billion euros in 2019.
    Economists warn that the challenges posed by climate change - freak weather patterns, tides flooding beaches, scorching summers and a decline in rainfall - could all pose a significant drag on Greece's growth potential.
    "We predict that GDP growth will be affected, the impact, will be of the order of two percent every year, or 700 billion euros in constant prices up to the end of the century - 2100. Of course, this is the no-action scenario," Central Bank Governor Yannis Stournaras told Reuters. Adaptation action could reduce the cost by 30%, and mitigation policies by a further 30%.
    "The market has not priced in already these dangers of climatic change, I mean the price of bonds do not incorporate the risks we face, this is why we should act. So governments should take the initiative, central banks should take the initiative," said Stournaras.
    With a public debt estimated at 196.6% of GDP, Greece is the most indebted economy in the euro zone, making it vital that the country can sustain growth to keep up repayments. Stournaras said the country's finances were manageable for now, but as world leaders meet in Glasgow for the COP26 global climate conference, he said he worried that not enough was being done to tackle the most damaging effects of global warming.
    "We call it the tragedy of the horizon, the horizon is so long, is so distant, that nobody thinks we should take action now to solve a problem that will mostly appear 50 years from now. This is not correct." he said.
    This summer Greece has already seen a glimpse of what a warmer future may bring, with thousands of hectares of forest burning for days in wildfires that tore through the outskirts of Athens and other areas after an unusually long heatwave.
    A team at the University of Athens predict temperatures rising as much as 2.6 degrees Celsius in the future and heatwave days - defined by at least 3 days over 40C - will increase by 15-20 days annually by 2050, while rainfall will decrease by 10% to 30%. Scientists also warn that sea levels could rise by 20 to 50 cm (8 to 20 inches) in the same period. One-third of the population lives at a distance of up to 2 km from the coast and 90% of the country's tourism infrastructure sits on coastal areas.
    "All the estimates for this region show that there are going to be allot of climatic pressures in the future," said Constantinos Kartalis, Director of the Department of  Environmental Physics  at the University of Athens who heads the team. "Temperature wise, there will be roughly an increase - at the pessimistic scenario of course - of about 2.6 degrees...for the period 2046 - 2065, which sounds far away but it's very close climatically speaking and requests a number of measures to be taken pre-actively," he said.
    (Production: Vassilis Triandafyllou, Deborah Kyvrikosaios, George Georgiopoulos, Lefteris Papadimas)
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