Greek floods and fires expose Europe's frail climate defenses
Send a link to a friend
[November 21, 2023]
By Angeliki Koutantou and Renee Maltezou
MOUZAKI, Greece (Reuters) - Dimitris Kouretas, elected governor of
Greece's central province of Thessaly last month in the wake of
calamitous floods, struggles to sleep at night.
The flooding in September - Greece's worst on record - devastated the
fertile region, swept away agricultural land, roads and railways, and
killed 16 people. It was the second major flood in three years to hit
Thessaly, part of a pattern of worsening extreme weather in Europe.
Kouretas reels off a list of flood protection projects left unfinished
by previous governments, including reservoirs to retain water in the
mountains, the dredging of riverbeds, and the removal of debris from
previous floods. Some have been stalled for as long as two decades, he
said.
"Can I have a magic wand to solve the problem?" asked the 61-year-old,
who is due to take office in January. Kouretas knows that his
administration will be judged on its ability to cope with the next
flood: "If you don't plan based on climate change adaptation ... then
you will be exposed."
Reuters conducted interviews with twelve disaster experts, government
officials and environmentalists, and reviewed Greek court documents and
EU reports, which showed that Greece's response is failing to keep pace
with a rapid increase in extreme weather, held back by factors including
bureaucracy, inaction and ineffective climate adaptation techniques.
Following the previous major storm that flooded Thessaly in 2020,
Greece's conservative government promised to prevent a repeat of the
disaster.
Greece has made significant progress with reducing its greenhouse
emissions and boosting renewables for electricity production.
But, with its public finances still recovering from a decade-long debt
crisis, Greece - like many countries around the world - is struggling to
find the multi-billion-dollar funds needed to build resilience against
extreme weather events.
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) concluded in a report last
month that insufficient investment and planning was leaving the world
vulnerable as climate-related hazards grew, including in the eastern
Mediterranean. Global funding shortfalls for adaptation are of the order
of $194-366 billion, it estimated.
"The climate crisis is coming faster than predicted," Environment
Minister Theodore Skylakakis said, adding the scale of the issue had
been underestimated at a European level. "These are pan-European
questions... We are the first to experience them. But sooner or later we
will all face them."
Climate adaptation is a theme of this year's edition of the annual U.N.
Climate Change Conference (COP 28) that opens on Nov. 30 in Dubai.
SHORTCOMINGS
Storm Daniel dumped the equivalent of 18 months of rain on Thessaly
between Sept. 4 and 7, briefly transforming its fertile plain - bordered
to the north by Mount Olympus, home of Greece's mythological Gods - into
a lake. The floods covered more than 1,100 sq km, an area roughly the
size of Los Angeles.
It marked the end of a heatwave, one of Greece's longest in decades,
which had already wreaked havoc with deadly wildfires.
Neither floods nor fires are new to Greece but with climate change, they
are becoming a frequent disruptor to an economy dependent on tourism and
farming.
The damage caused by Storm Daniel - estimated at over 2 billion euros
according to a report by Dutch post-disaster advisors HVA International
- has sparked an investigation into whether authorities did enough to
prevent the disaster.
A Sept. 13 prosecutor's order, reviewed by Reuters, showed judges in
Thessaly are investigating local authorities' actions in 2020-2023 for
potential violations, including mismanagement of funds, that could have
aggravated the storm's impact.
Former Thessaly governor Kostas Agorastos, who suffered a shock defeat
in last month's election amid anger over the flooding, said that since
2020 around 70 projects have been undertaken worth 164 million euros,
including cleaning up streams and reinforcing embankments. Some of them
have not been finished.
He did not comment on the investigation.
Greece's multiple layers of bureaucracy can delay or derail projects.
Just the permissioning for clearing a river can take years, says Giorgos
Stasinos, head of the Technical Chamber of Greece, an engineers'
association that acts as an advisor to the state on engineering and
construction practices.
"It could be two years in red tape for a project that takes two or three
months to complete," he said, noting that local opposition on
environmental grounds can result in lengthy court battles.
Lack of government capacity has been another challenge. Greece's
national meteorological service (EMY) does not have the equipment to
issue real-time flood alerts, Greece's emergency plan issued in October
2022 says.
Greece has launched a 2 billion euro program which includes the purchase
of meteorological radars and a so-called 'nowcasting' system that will
help forecast floods.
[to top of second column]
|
Workers try to remove some equipment from a building which collapsed
into the Pamisos river during storm Daniel, in Mouzaki, Greece,
November 5, 2023. Greece faces an uphill battle to cope with the
growing impacts of climate change. REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki
Opposition parties have accused Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis'
government of lacking the political will to implement national plans
for flood risks.
"They are all left in a drawer," the head of the leftist Syriza
party parliamentary group, Sokratis Famellos, said this month at an
environmental conference.
The European Commission decided on Nov. 16 to refer Greece to the EU
Court of Justice for failing to provide updated flood maps after
Athens missed a 2020 deadline. The environment ministry said it aims
to deliver them by Nov. 30 and would include data on the worsening
extreme weather of recent years, without which the maps risked being
misleading.
"We have to change our prediction methods," Skylakakis said,
acknowledging the rapid pace of climate change. "Instead of focusing
on the past, we must look at the future."
DUTCH MODEL
A building frenzy in Greece that started in the 1950s - amid a
post-war economic boom - led to chaotic urban development. It is not
uncommon to see buildings on dried-up river beds which turn into
torrents in heavy rain.
The buildings dotting the banks of Thessaly's Pamisos river, whose
riverbed has been narrowed near the town of Mouzaki by as much as
70%, is a case in point. A medical care unit in Mouzaki partially
collapsed into the river in 2020; another two-storey building was
swept away this year.
Thanos Giannakakis, WWF's Nature-Based Solutions Coordinator, said
extreme weather made it vital to restore the natural environment
around Greece's rivers': "the only way out is to give rivers space,
to reconnect them with flood plains".
The restoration of riverside forests, natural meanders in waterways
and weirs in the mountains would all help diminish flooding, he
said.
Greece plans to devote 3.2 billion euros of state and EU funds on
climate resilience by 2027, Deputy Finance Minister Nikos
Papathanasis told Reuters.
Netherlands, a leading adopter of "nature-based" solutions, spent a
roughly equal amount of about $2.8 billion dollars to encompass 30
projects in 2007-2022 for its "Room for the River" program.
It gave four rivers in the Dutch delta space to flood safely.
Measures included relocating dykes inland, lowering of floodplains
and groynes, creating high-water channels and water storage areas.
Following Storm Daniel, Greece sought help from Netherlands-based
HVA International, an agricultural firm that offers post-disaster
advice.
HVA teams found poor dyke maintenance, uncleaned riverbeds and
overlapping roles in flood defense management, its CEO Miltiadis
Gkouzouris told Reuters.
According to HVA's mission report, all flood defense infrastructure
has to be rebuilt while protocols for crisis management, clearly
stipulating responsibilities and actions to be taken, are needed.
"There is a clear momentum and need for fundamental change," said
the report, released last week.
EUROPE'S HELP NEEDED
Greece, the most indebted nation in the euro zone in terms of share
of GDP, approved an additional 600 million euros for disaster relief
measures this year.
The government announced in September a doubling of the annual funds
set aside for natural disasters from 2024 to 600 million euros,
though officials acknowledge it will not be enough. Mitsotakis has
urged the EU to top up its solidarity fund and help countries tackle
the impact of climate change.
With the government unable to cover all the risks, Mitsotakis said
in September it plans eventually to make private flood insurance
mandatory and will, in the meantime, offer tax incentives from next
year to people who insure their homes.
Greece's central bank warned in 2011 the economic cost of climate
change will hit 700 billion euros by 2100, equivalent to more than
three years of economic output, if the country does not act.
Adaptation measures worth 67 billion euros could reduce that loss to
510 billion euros, the country's leading economic think tank IOBE
said in a February report.
But officials say there is only so much the country can do.
"No country in the world is planning for once-in-1,000-year rain
water levels because it wouldn't be drowning in rain water, it would
be drowning in debt much sooner," said Petros Varelidis, Secretary
General for Water Management at the Environment Ministry.
(Additional reporting by Lefteris Papadimas, Louisa Gouliamaki and
Stamos Prousalis; Writing by Renee Maltezou and Michele Kambas;
Editing by Daniel Flynn)
[© 2023 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]This material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |