Many of the hard details remain, but political leaders from Greece, Turkey, Malta and the Palestinian Authority, joined by delegations from many other coutries, signed the Mediterranean Climate Change Initiative. The agreement
aims to accelerate environmental cooperation in the region, protect the fragile ecosystem and promote and implement low-carbon development projects in the region.It's amazing Turkey and Greece can ever agree on anything after the decades long war and ensuing squabbles over Cyprus, yet on climate change, they find both agreement and the urgency to act.
The Mediterranean region is already suffering the effects of climate change, with many countries, among them Greece and Turkey, hit with water shortages, increased drought, wildfires and a decrease in crop production.If decades of anomosity can be set aside here, why shouldn't cooperation be possible between other countries too?
The Greek Government has launched this initiative in recognition of the serious threats climate change poses to the region’s stability and prosperity, as well as the conviction that embracing a low carbon development model provides a unique opportunity to jointly address financial, energy and climate crises.
Opening the Mediterranean Climate Change Initiative conference, Papandreou said that from within the "bad scenarios" for climate change appearing to be coming true in the southeastern Mediterranean with increasingly frequent extreme weather phenomena and threats to the region's unique agricultural production, "which is a capital for its culture," an opportunity arises that of taking advantage of the cooperation among the regional countries "to develop a new growth model, making use of the region's resources, to create new green industries."
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