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Regional Bio

Greece is a country in southern Europe that borders the Mediterranean Sea and is made up of thousands of islands which results in it having the longest coastline in Europe. Its capital is Athens, which is home to the Acropolis and Parthenon, and has a land area of about 51,000 square miles. Greece has many different climates that include rocky mountains, thick forests, barren deserts and plains, and sandy beaches and it also has many different historical sites which makes it a very popular tourist destination.

1. The British Museum, Ancient Greece, “Geography”, Accessed September 26, 2019, http://www.ancientgreece.co.uk/geography/home_set.html

2. Wikipedia, “Geography of Greece”, September 20, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Greece

3. Wikipedia, “Greece”, September 20, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece

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Trip Savvy, “Maps of Greece”, June 6, 2019, https://www.tripsavvy.com/maps-of-greece-1526137

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kythera-family.net, “Flag of the Hellenic Republic of Greece”, April 11, 2006, https://www.kythera-family.net/en/history/general-history/flag-of-the-hellenic-republic-of-greece

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The Issue

The biggest issues in Greece are its environmental pollution problems. Unregulated industries and factories and high amounts of tourism and carbon usage lead to major air and water pollution in Greece. In the 1980’s the air pollution became so bad and oppressive that the government had to close or shut down production in dozens of industries and ban cars and traffic in the city of Athens. The smog regularly sends hundreds of Greeks to the hospital with respiratory and heart problems. Greece is one of the top 50 nations with the world’s highest levels of industrial carbon dioxide.

The pollution problems in Greece are the consequences of almost complete disregard for environmental protection measures during rapid industrial growth and rapid, unregulated urban growth in the mid to late 1900s. These many pollution problems are also majorly affecting Greece’s flora and fauna with dozens of animal species and hundreds of plant species becoming endangered.

In recent years Greece has made a significant improvement with its air quality. There has been a 35% reduction in its ecological footprint and the state of its nature and biodiversity is rather satisfactory compared to the rest of the EU. But despite that, if Greece doesn’t continuously work towards preventing pollution, their air quality could quickly start declining again.

Nations Encyclopedia, “Greece-Environment”, Accessed September 26, 2019, https://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Europe/Greece-ENVIRONMENT.html

Greek News Agenda, “Greece - State of the Environment Report 2018”, November 13, 2018, http://www.greeknewsagenda.gr/index.php/topics/politics-polity/6879-environment-report

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Stakeholders

Overall, there are four main stakeholders that are involved with Greece’s pollution issue. The first one is the Greek government. They enact laws to place regulations on pollutants and spend millions trying to fix the pollution levels. They do as much as they can to make the quality of their citizens lives better. The second one is Greek industries because they are the main cause of the pollution. They make it bad enough to the point where the Greek government forces them to shut down, so they not only hurt Greece, they hurt themselves trying to be as profitable as possible. The third one is tourism which contributes to the smog and the massive amounts of waste in cities. Tourists need a method of transportation to get around, so they tend to resort to cars and since Greece has many popular tourist spots, the use of cars and gasoline vehicles significantly add to the pollution levels. Finally, the fourth one is Greek citizens. The citizens of Greece cause part of the pollution problem the same way tourists do, and they also suffer from it because it gives many of them health problems that require them to go to the hospital and it can even kill them.

University of California, Irvine, “Greece”, Accessed October 31, 2019, https://www.ics.uci.edu/~wmt/courses/ICS5_W13/Greece.html

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Scholarly Position

In this article, “Air Pollution and Cause Specific Mortality in Athens" they conducted a study of the short-term effects of high levels of air pollution on cause specific mortality in Athens, Greece using data obtained from 1975-1982. This study was conducted on all age groups and to maximize cost-efficiency they came up with a design to contrast high and low pollution exposure days. They used daily measurements of smoke and SO2 levels as indicators of air pollution. In the results, the researchers saw that the number of deaths from respiratory causes had a significant excess during index days. There were also more deaths from cardiac and other causes on index days, but their excesses were smaller. The researchers concluded that air pollution in Athens during the study period did have an effect on the residents of the city. They said that although the association is not very strong, the results of the study clearly indicated that the pollution was causal since it was evident with respect to respiratory conditions.

Katsouyanni, K., A. Karakatsani, I. Messari, G. Touloumi, A. Hatzakis, A. Kalandidi, and D. Trichopoulos. “Air Pollution and Cause Specific Mortality in Athens." Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (1979-) 44, no. 4 (1990): 321-24. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.uky.edu/stable/25567106.

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Greek Reporter, “ Athens Smog Levels Concern Doctors “, December 23, 2013, https://greece.greekreporter.com/2013/12/23/athens-smog-levels-concern-doctors/

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The Times, “ Beaches near Athens polluted by oil after tanker Agia Zoni II sinks “ September 15, 2017, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/beaches-near-athens-polluted-by-oil-after-tanker-agia-zoni-ii-sinks-k553w7wz9

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Associated Press, “Under the sea: Fighting Greece’s plastic trash problem”, April 5, 2018, https://apnews.com/b4bbfdcbfc5144849291d4ecdd903729/Under-the-sea:-Fighting-Greece%27s-plastic-trash-problem

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Medium, “Pollution kills 1 in 12 Greeks. Time for a massive clean up act.”, October 31, 2017, https://medium.com/@HellenicLeaders/pollution-kills-1-in-12-greeks-time-for-a-massive-clean-up-act-c2d078d1c6b6

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The Solution

Since the biggest environmental problem in Greece is pollution caused by fossil fuel emissions, Greece needs to start taking major steps to decrease those emissions and their carbon usage. The best thing Greece can do is to switch to renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydro power and to eliminate the use of fossil fuels. Also, in major cities in Greece, they can eliminate the use of gasoline and diesel-powered cars and switch to electric vehicles and public transportation.

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Vox, “How the Euro Caused the Greek Crisis”, July 2, 2015, https://youtu.be/ULQiCN0YNmw

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Who’s Involved

Pretty much everyone in Greece will have to be involved to implement this solution but the Greek Government will be the main entity involved in it because it will be the one to write and pass the laws and regulations required to put the solution in effect. Without the government intervening and providing consequences for the use of fossil fuels, everyone else in Greece causing the pollution problems will continue doing what they are currently doing, and nothing will change.

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Stakeholder Roles

The individual stakeholders involved are the Greek Government, tourists, Greek citizens, and Greek industries and they will all have their parts in implementing the solution.

The Greek Government will be the one to act and start implementing the changes. They will create the rules and regulations against carbon usage and emissions, and they will be the ones to implement the consequences against those who do not follow them. Consequences which can include fining all the way up to prison time. The Greek Government can also provide the funding to help implement the changes required to reduce emissions and switch to renewable power.

Industries in Greece will also have a big role to play because they are the main source of the carbon emissions. The government is forcing them to stop using fossil fuels which means they must find ways to harness and use other sources of power. To do this, many industries can look at how other countries use clean energy. One example is to use Nuclear power plants to provide electricity. Since nuclear power plants don’t burn fuel, they don’t put out greenhouse gas emissions (1). Other examples of clean energy sources industries can use is solar power, wind power, and hydro power. They can build solar panels, windmills, and water turbines to harness this energy and convert between different types throughout the year. Solar power can be used in the summers when the weather is mostly clear and sunny (2) and wind power whenever they have windy weather. Since Greece is also surrounded by the ocean, it will be easier to build water turbines that can generate power from ocean waves.

The tourists and citizens in Greece will have an active role in helping decrease the pollution and smog in cities. One of the biggest causes of smog and pollution in Greek cities is the use of gasoline and diesel engines (3) so to fix this, the people in Greece need to use different methods of transportation. Different methods of transportation can include electric cars that don’t produce emissions, carpooling, walking, biking, and taking the bus or metro when travelling throughout the city.

 1.      Duke Energy, “Nuclear Energy: A clean energy resource”, accessed December 5, 2019, https://www.duke-energy.com/energy-education/how-energy-works/nuclear-power

2.      Climates to Travel, “Climate-Greece”, Accessed December 5, 2019, https://www.climatestotravel.com/climate/greece

3.      City Metric, “Athens is trying to cut fumes from its roads and smoke from its bars”, March 12, 2018, https://www.citymetric.com/horizons/athens-trying-cut-fumes-its-roads-and-smoke-its-bars-3738

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Timeline

The timeline for this solution is different for different parts of it because something can be started immediately such as carpooling and biking or taking the bus, while others might take a while to completely implement such as changing power sources or using electric vehicles. I think we should give 15-20 years to phase out the things that cause carbon emissions with it being almost completely implemented by 2040. Getting laws and regulations agreed on and passed through government can take a while so it will probably be over a year for laws to get passed. It will also take many years for industries and power plants to figure out how and to convert to renewable and clean energy sources. It would also take a while to phase out the use of gasoline and diesel engines. The import and production of those cars in Greece can be stopped immediately but it will take a long time to phase out the use of the cars already in the country and get people to buy different ones.

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Open Access Government, “Greece receives EU funding to become first member state to use solar power to reduce power outages“, October 11, 2018, https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/solar-power-to-reduce-power-outages/53159/

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Social Complexity

There can be a big social complexity with this solution because it requires a lot of money. Most people don’t have enough money to go out and buy electric cars or switch the type of power they use in their homes. Industries also want the biggest profit and requiring spending more money on clean energy sources where there are cheaper ones available will take away from that profit, so they won’t want to do it. A simple solution to that could be the government providing grants to help people change and rewards to those that change quickly. But that would be extremely hard to do if a country was in debt and in the middle of an economic crisis, which Greece is. Greece currently has scheduled debt payments till beyond 2060 (1) so it will be kind of hard to ask for loans while in debt so some of the solutions will have to be delayed implementing. Instead of requiring people to switch to electric cars if they want to own a car, they could just only stop the importing and production of gas and diesel vehicles in the country and the only future cars that can be bought will be electric.

 1.      The Balance, “Greek Debt Crisis Explained”, November 30, 2019, https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-the-greece-debt-crisis-3305525