World Courant
Gracefully rising above the din of croaking frogs because the solar units, a pelican flies over Lake Karla, one of many largest wetlands in inland Greece.
The lake was drained in 1962 to fight malaria and restored from the valley to the wetlands in 2018 to alleviate the drought. After final 12 months’s lethal floods, the lake is now thrice its regular dimension.
The way to take care of the aftermath of the catastrophe has turn into a debate about the way forward for agriculture within the Thessaly area as an entire.
The farmers round Karla, many descendants of the lake individuals who had moved to land simply two generations earlier, noticed their properties and herds decimated by final 12 months’s floods.
In September, Storm Daniel, a Mediterranean cyclone of unprecedented depth, dumped months of rain in just some hours on Thessaly, Greece’s most fertile plain.
The flood, which killed seventeen folks, destroyed roads and bridges and drowned tens of hundreds of livestock.
Daniel, which arrived after a serious wave of wildfires, was adopted simply weeks later by Storm Elias. Mixed, they induced what Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis later referred to as “the worst floods” in Greek historical past.
The lakeside village of Sotirio, as soon as bordered by corn and cotton fields, now sits on the sting of a swamp. Darkish inexperienced water buzzing with bugs covers the fields. Even the place the flood has receded, solely silt and withered stems stay.
Angelos Yamalis, a third-generation farmer, stated his household misplaced 50 hectares of cotton, 30 hectares of wheat and 15 hectares of pistachio timber.
“It was a whole catastrophe… Even after the water recedes, we do not know if the fields shall be productive,” the 25-year-old stated.
“Now we have primarily based our complete future on this space, on these crops,” Yamalis stated, including that new timber would take no less than seven years to bear fruit.
Officers have given no timetable for restoration and there are conflicting views on how one can proceed. The authorities in Thessaly are in favor of digging a big canal by means of which water can circulate to the Aegean Sea.
However a Dutch water administration firm that advises the Greek authorities is advocating a special method, aimed not solely at combating flooding, but additionally at stopping future droughts.
The corporate HVA Worldwide proposes to construct dozens of small dams to gather rainwater within the mountains.
Thessaly additionally must rethink its dependence on cotton, says Miltiadis Gkouzouris, CEO of the Amsterdam-based firm. The area ought to transfer away from cotton manufacturing whereas there’s nonetheless time to protect what stays of underground water reserves, he stated.
Greece is the European Union’s fundamental cotton producer, with 80 % of manufacturing. Though cotton represents lower than 0.2 % of the worth of European agricultural manufacturing, it’s of “robust regional significance”, the EU says.
Gkouzouris countered that cotton cultivation “will not be worthwhile in itself and everybody is aware of that.”
“We calculate that if this continues on the charge we’re at now, we may have an irreversible state of affairs inside 15 years,” he stated.
Thessaly’s governor, Dimitris Kouretas, is towards the dumping of cotton, nonetheless a profitable trade for residents.
Kouretas, a Harvard College-educated biochemistry professor who was elected governor in October, has argued that cotton generates 210 million euros ($227 million) in earnings for 15,000 households in Thessaly and is a crucial export for Greece. One other 65 million euros in EU subsidies shall be acquired.
Greek valley that turned a lake fuels debate over drought | Local weather information
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