Category: Climate

by Annalisa Jenkins

A bulwark between the city and the mountain, The Volunteer Forest Protection and Firefighting Team of Ilioupoli is at the end of the road, literally on the frontline of climate change. As unprecedented heat and drought bring intensifying wildfires to Greece, the volunteers of Ilioupoli struggle to protect their forest under the command of a government that volunteers say doesn’t prioritize the preservation of unbuilt environments.

The Hellenic Fire Service, volunteer firefighter Maria Arva said, has three tiers of importance: human lives; then property; and finally nature. She agrees that human lives must be protected first, but gets frustrated when people build homes in fire-prone forests, and expect them to be prioritized over the nature that drew them there. For Arva, “You have to save lives. You have to save priority properties. But the forest is the most important for us.”

As wildfires intensify around the country, Greek fire response has focused on fire suppression rather than prevention. Faced with growing, harder to extinguish fires and the destruction of their land, some underfunded but dedicated volunteer firefighters like Arva have taken the work of wildfire prevention into their own hands.

The Greek branch of the World Wildlife Fund insists that a transition to fire prevention is essential. “We need to do things and activities in the forest to prepare them for summer, in order for them to be more resilient,” Panagiota Maragou, the Head of Conservation at the World Wildlife Fund Greece said. The chapter recently prepared a legislative proposal to use prescribed burns as a tool for fire prevention.

Cutting off low-hanging branches of trees and removing dead wood and underbrush would make forests less flammable, Arva said, making for easier wildfire seasons. The only problem is that it’s illegal.

By doing so anyway, the Ilioupoli team helped save the area in a 2015 wildfire, Arva said; flames didn’t reach the branches of the trees and, though they charred, they didn’t ignite, stopping further spread.

“We look at the mountain and see nothing but black,” volunteer firefighter Maria Arva said last week, with Athens’ Mount Hymettus looming behind her. The station was formed after a 1998 fire devastated the mountain, killing four. The 2015 fire was the second to rip down the same path. Blackened remains of pine trees still dot the hillside.

Arva is a journalist at the Greek TV station ANT1, but each summer, from May 1st to October 31st, she spends her free time fighting wildfires. The firehouse is a small wooden cabin with plump couches, a large television, and children’s art decorating the walls. Off the main living room is a radio system and several monitors, one showing footage from a nearby watchtower. Two white storage containers covered in graffiti stand outside, one with bunk-beds for late shifts, and one with personal equipment.

There isn’t a parking lot at the station; its two municipality-owned fire engines park at the end of the road. This is the first summer the trucks will live there full-time. Until this year, volunteers picked them up from the local Hellenic Fire Station each morning when the station opened, and dropped them back off at night. The team doesn’t have enough committed volunteers to staff the station all day, or all year.

Because the team doesn’t own their trucks, they can’t repair them, and Arva says that the municipality doesn’t treat them well. “They didn’t care for them, and practically they didn’t care about our lives being in that car.” The station’s main engine is from 1992, and each year of wear is evident in its dull exterior. Besides the trucks, the station otherwise relies entirely on donations for equipment.

Arva says the mountain cannot survive another fire. Pine trees don’t spread fertile seeds until they are twelve to fifteen years old, she said, and the regrowth from the 2015 fire is not yet mature enough to reproduce. “We will do whatever it takes not to be burned again,” Arva said. “It’s you do it” or the mountain is “destroyed forever.”

By: Maggie Stewart

Kastalia Theo was swimming in a cove off the Cycladic islands when something brushed against her leg. At first, “I pushed it away,” she said, thinking, “it was a plastic bag with a hair in it,” but as she began to have an allergic reaction, she realized it was a jellyfish. 

Theo, 21, now works part-time at Archelon, a sea turtle rescue and rehabilitation center founded in 1983, located in Glyfada, a coastal neighborhood outside Athens, giving tours and educating people about turtle injuries, many caused by plastic mistaken for jellyfish or entanglement in fishing gear. Lying in the hospital after her sting, she realized, “People think, oh, how could a turtle confuse a plastic bag for a jellyfish? Are they stupid? But they’re actually really smart.” 

Theo grew up in Greece, spending summers camping on Zakynthos, an island known for its threatened Loggerhead nesting beaches, a species of turtle common in the Mediterranean. Her fascination with sea turtles began here. 

Greece is crucial to the survival of Loggerheads. The Greek island of Zakynthos alone hosts 80% of the Mediterranean’s nests. But tourism and climate change put them at risk. Zakynthos is one of Europe’s most overcrowded destinations. According to The Guardian, overnight stays outnumber residents 150 to one. Tourists unknowingly disrupt nesting sites by crowding beaches and playing loud music. Artificial light from beach bars confuses hatchlings, drawing them away from the moonlit sea. Climate change heats the sand, skewing hatchling sex ratios towards females. Meanwhile, shrinking fish stocks put fishermen in competition with turtles. As Theo told me, some even deliberately harm them. 

The mounting threats to the turtles and her personal experience pushed her into action. A few years after her sting, she joined a nesting beach project in the Peloponnese. “I was there during the beginning of the nesting season, and with the eggs and the mother turtles, it was a smaller beach project out of all of them, but it was really nice.”  

Now, Theo spends her free time educating the public. Theo introduced herself as my tour guide for the day while standing inside the teal-colored former train cars that serve as Archelon’s office. Dressed in a light blue shirt that read “Ask me about sea turtles,” and silver sea turtle hoop earrings, she led the way. 

When I arrived, the power had gone out due to construction on a nearby marina. Still, the team carried on. As we walked through the open-air tanks, one turtle surfaced for a breath while a volunteer cleaned another enclosure. “We will make it work,” one said when referring to dealing with the outage. 

The volunteers of Archelon embody this spirit of perseverance, adjusting release methods, caring for injured turtles, and taking them back as often as they need. One turtle, named Sophie, lost a flipper to a fishing net. “We’ve released her before, gotten a call, then brought her back, released her again, gotten a call, and brought her back,” Theo told me. But Archelon hasn’t quit on Sophie or any turtles.

“It is everything for us,” said Christiana Kamprogianni, Archelon’s communications officer. “Volunteers are how we exist and how we can protect turtles. If we didn’t have volunteers, we wouldn’t be able to do any of the work we do.” 

Their efforts have been paying off in recent years; conservation teams across the Mediterranean have recorded record numbers of nests and surviving hatchlings. But while Loggerhead conservation is currently a success story, it remains a fragile one. Since Loggerheads take roughly 20 years to mature, Panagiota Maragou, WWF’s Head of Conservation, warns that the success we see today in nesting is a result of conservation work from 20 years prior. To ensure the continued protection of sea turtles, volunteers like Theo and the team at Archelon are crucial, as caretakers and educators protecting sea turtles from the increasing threats of climate change, pollution, and human encroachment.

“We just have to let nature be nature,” Theo said, and by “ helping nature be nature it means fixing the problems caused by humans.”

A galvanising fight to democratise the beaches of Paros inspired hope for activists on the island. Now, as the prospect of over-development threatens the nature of the island, is that same fighting energy replicable?

It was late in the Summer of 2023, and the Greek island of Paros was rejoicing: it wasn’t just the summer festivities that had residents jubilant. On the sandy beaches of Santa Maria and Marcello, a people’s movement was coalescing in real time.

The Save Paros movement, a hundreds-strong group of Parean citizens upset with the rise of illegal sunbeds on their beaches, were protesting for their constitutional right to lounge on public beaches to be honoured. The fight was a mobilizing one that led to concrete actions by the federal government, who levied fines against illegal sunbed operators.

For activists, including Caroline Hall, one of the founders of the Save Paros Movement, the feeling was hopeful: “The people had collaborated and been victorious.”

For activists like Hall, it felt like this could be a watershed moment: finally, the people could rise up against the overtourism the island had experienced in recent years. But two years later, from the perch of her farm-house in the hill-top settlement of Kamares overlooking the sea, she asks: where are all the people now?


The story of Paros, as a town, has been intertwined with tourism since the mid-century, when the notion of the “Greek Summer” became increasingly romanticized among European tourists. Paros, with its aquamarine water and picture-perfect white towns, was the ideal place to vacation. It wasn’t until the late 2010s, however, that Paros became a point of pillage for foreign investors who jumped at the opportunity to buy cheap land in the islands. According to Giorgios Lialios, a journalist at Kathemerini who reports on climate and tourism, the effects were “a disaster.” Vacation homes and have used up the island’s scarce water supply, and many of them were – and still are – illegally constructed on unofficial roads, violating Greece’s strict zoning laws. Despite the effects on locals, unlike with private beaches, the public response has been muted. According to Hall, where hundreds used to attend citizens’ meetings, only “20 people show up now.”

Why is this? For many Pareans, the allure of foreign investment is too strong a pull to resist. According to Paros’ mayor, Costas Bizas, the island of 20,000 – without a university or proper medical facilities – isn’t suited for young people or the elderly, for whom the chance to cash out on their land and move to Athens “out of necessity” is a bet they’re willing to take, regardless of the effect it might have on the island.

Where does this leave the fight against over-development, then? Where public support is concerned, the citizens’ movement is in the process of pursuing legal battles against the construction of illegal properties on the island, and a new urban plan for the island that decides which areas are suitable for construction is currently in its consultation phase. For Hall, the future of the island’s development “is unclear.” For now, though, at least they have the beaches.

By: Megan Cameron

Last Thursday, Dimitris Skiadis and his sister Eleni got lucky. They began the process of retrieving their nets at around 8:20pm, with Dimitris monitoring the reel and Eleni standing close by, ready to untangle each fish from the intricate snare of synthetic fibers. It was earlier than usual, so they weren’t expecting to catch much.

After only five minutes, the fish started piling up. Eleni said this was a good sign. Illuminated by the glow of the setting sun, her fingers worked at an astonishing pace, expertly removing fish after fish as 600 meters of yellow threads gradually accumulated at her side. A few more minutes passed, and she quickly spotted gaping holes in the netting, along with a few fish that had small bites taken out of their flesh. She then understood the cause of their good fortune.

Dolphins, which are spotted frequently in the crystal clear waters of the Cyclades and often cause more harm for fishermen than good by damaging equipment and raiding nets, had chased a school of fish into the right place at the right time. However, most days, the fish are a lot harder to come by.

Born and raised in Paros, Dimitris and Eleni have witnessed the decimation of the island’s fishing community firsthand. Overfishing, pollution, the arrival of invasive species like the poisonous lionfish and rabbitfish, and the implementation of counterproductive policies by the European Union (EU) have played a direct role in the destruction of traditional modes of fishing across Greece. To avoid falling victim to this, their family was forced to turn to fishing tourism.

Dimitris and Eleni were first taught to fish by their father, Adonis, at a time when the commercial fishing industry flourished and served as a crucial component of the Parian economy. They would spend days on the water, working together to make a living. Even now, at age 79, Adonis supports his children behind the scenes, mending damaged nets, attaching lures to longlines, and even offering assistance on the boat when Eleni is unavailable.

The most significant pieces of legislation to impact families like theirs were a series of EU directives passed between 2013 and 2014, which established the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) and European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF). Together, the CFP and EMFF aimed to limit the impact of overfishing by offering financial incentives to Greek fishermen in exchange for destroying their boats and revoking their professional licenses.

Dimitris and Eleni’s boat, the Regina, was built by Dimitris when he was 14. He says he knows “where every single nail and every single piece of wood is placed,” and “no amount of money” would ever convince him to give it away. Since the boat is “very dear to his heart,” and keeping it in his possession was his top priority, giving it a few renovations and offering fishing charters for two months of the year was the clear choice for their family.

The current mayor of Paros, Kostas Bizas, believes the ultimate goal of the EU is to “gradually stop fishing” all together and turn to rely entirely on fish farming. He also acknowledged that these decisions, which are supposedly made “in the name of protecting the environment,” are often a result of the “big interests involved in European policies,” including mass fishing corporations.

“This whole situation right now, it’s all humans’ fault,” Dimitris said. “This is all made by human mistakes.”

By Valerio Castellini

I sit aboard Dimitris and Eleni Skiadis’s kaiki fishing boat in a quiet bay just south of Aliki. The sun lowers itself behind white Cycladic limestone, painting the scattered homes along the shore gold. A crane towers over a half-finished development nearby.

“These houses belong to an American,” says lifelong fisherman Skiadis, scanning the complex. “He brought his boat, too, and kept an American flag on it for months.” He adds: “Only two houses in this entire bay belong to locals.” A glance at Google Earth’s archives confirms him: most of the homes weren’t even here a mere 20 years ago.

Like many other Cycladic islands, Paros is struggling to keep up with the wave of gentrification that has striked the archipelago in the last two decades. Paros has led the Cyclades in building permits for five consecutive years—surpassing Mykonos and Santorini—and now ranks first in the region in square footage under construction. Plots and homes change hands rapidly—over 2,000 registered sales from 2020 to mid‑2024. The island, long hidden between its flashier neighbors, has suddenly become a speculative prize. Eventually, the fear is that the upsurge of these irreversible projects will destroy what once was a paradisiac escape.

Architect Angeliki Evripioti of Evripiotis Architects, who splits her time between Paros and Syros, watches these changes closely. She describes clients paying premium for large, glass‑fronted homes cut into steep slopes—“semi‑excavations” that double buildable area by slipping through legal loopholes. 

Traditional Cycladic terraces, once natural check‑dams against storm runoff, are paved over. “They have been traditional here for thousands of years, some of these walls are centuries-old,” explains Nicolas Stephanou from the Save Paros organisation. The result? When Paros endured its worst flash floods in 20 years this April, streets in Naoussa became mud chutes, and infrastructure strained under devastation.

“These buildings violate the topography and landscape of the Cyclades,” says architect Angeliki Evripioti, who has worked across Paros and Syros since 2010. She tries to balance minimalism with vernacular tradition—but it’s not easy. Demands have changed, together with the people that land in Paros. Now everything seems to be about profit, with no regards for the islands’ needs and long-term sustainability.

Architectural overreach had moved beyond aesthetic concerns, becoming increasingly entangled with questions of access and sustainability. “It’s like putting 100 people in a room meant for 10,” says realtor Filia Grigoraskou, president of the Realtors Association of Paros & Antiparos. The island’s infrastructure has not kept pace with its real estate boom: narrow roads buckle under summer traffic, and restaurant reservations are harder to find than building permits. Despite a 2012 urban plan that mapped out no-construction zones, no follow-up study was ever implemented. 

Many properties now under construction are actually based on permits issued before 2012. Older, more permissive criteria. After several extensions following the financial crisis and the Covid period, this might be the end of it. “People are trying to materialize their rights before they lose them,” explains Sophie Katsipi, a Parian realtor and member of the Association. The result is a last ditch building boom across Paros—particularly outside urban settlements, where large properties can still be developed under grandfathered rules. 

Simultaneously, the island’s basic services are thinning. “People coming to work in tourism are from everywhere—even overseas,” she notes. But those who sustain the local population—teachers, healthcare workers, municipal staff—are increasingly priced out. A town built for slow rhythms now struggles to serve its own residents.

There are efforts to market “authenticity”—to package Paros as a place of slow life and vernacular beauty. But even that can ring hollow. “Tourists don’t appreciate rural Paros,” Katsipi admits. “I don’t want another sushi place—I’ve had enough!”

By Annalisa Jenkins

On a hot June morning, Stelios Vathrakokoilis leaned against the bed of his pickup and looked out over the cracked fields on the Cycladic island of Naxos where he and his brother grow potatoes. He gestured over his shoulder and sighed.

“Fifteen days from now, this well will be completely dry,” he said. When the water runs out, he will be forced to irrigate with salty groundwater.

Having grown up in the 1970s and 80s, Vathrakokoilis remembers farmers making a good
living. Naxos potato seeds, known for the unique flavor from the island’s low-calcium soil, were coveted around the country.

Since the mid-90s, however, climate change has parched the island and over-tourism has poached agricultural land, workers, and water. A few decades ago, Naxos produced over 20,000 tons of potatoes each year, Dimitrios Kapounis, President of the island’s farming association, said. This year, he hopes it will produce three.

In 2024, drought left the island’s reservoir empty and the island’s hotels over-pumped their wells, leaving Vathrakokoilis’ dry. That year, he said he “didn’t plant a thing, absolutely nothing, because of the lack of water.” Vathrakokoilis’ work is threatened by climate change, which parches the island; over-tourism, which poaches agricultural land, workers, and water; and a culture that devalues farming.

Vathrakokoilis says the government has yet to fulfill its promise to put water meters on Naxos; there is no tool to measure or regulate how much the ever-growing number of hotels pull—the hot tub on one hotel room’s private balcony looks out over a large pool.

Over the past several decades, the island’s economy has become dependent on tourism: “if hotels don’t work in the summer, the farmers don’t work in the winter,” Irene Lianou, Reservation Manager at hotel Lianos Village, said.

“Tourists are fine,” Vathrakokoilis said, “we all profit from that.” But he needs the island to find a way to share dwindling water resources.

He has some ideas. If he had the money, Vathrakokoilis would install a water-efficient drip system to irrigate each plant directly rather than sprinkling the whole field. Since 2017, he has advocated for a waste-water system that would re-use millions of cubic meters of grey water for agriculture rather than dumping it in the ocean, bringing in water more cost-effectively than a desalination plant.

The project has seen little progress over the last eight years. Vathrakokoilis is frustrated by the country’s politics, which he thinks are more wrapped up in partisan infighting than passing policies that will help people. “This is crazy, we’re losing so much water,” he said.

Eleni Myrivili, who served as Athens’ Chief Resilience Officer from 2014 to 2019, agrees the Greek government could do more to address the problem. “I swear to you, nobody in the central government, and nobody in city government was talking about climate change,” she said in a recent interview of her time in the Athens office.

Now working for the UN, Myrivili says that globally, climate efforts are focused on mitigation, not the kind of acute adaptation projects that Vahtrakokoilis needs to keep his farm alive. He feels forgotten, that “no one cares for agriculture.”

Paros’ mayor, Kostas Bizas, who campaigned on regulating tourism, spoke of food production with resignation, suggesting an inevitable decline. While the government could subsidize equipment modernization, he says the fate of farmers is in the hands of local society, where they cannot compete with the prices of imported goods.

As the effects of climate change worsen and adaptation policies become increasingly necessary, Greece must decide if it will invest in climate adaptation for Cycladic farmers. Eleni Myrivili grapples with how lawmakers ought to decide what is worth saving, scoffing at new housing developments in Boston and Miami flood zones.

While not optimistic about agriculture’s future on his island, Mayor Bizas worries about tourism becoming its only industry; “You cannot totally rely on tourism, because it comes and it goes,” Mayor Bizas warns. Katarina Moschu worries that the boom of tourism will end, and that “the locals will have sold out their island and will be left with nothing.”

If his government does not invest to help him adapt to climate change, Vathrakokoilis is sure about one thing. “In a few years, there will be no agricultural production on the island.”

by Maggie Stewart

In February 2023, cheesemaker Katerina Moschou was helping her goat give birth. Six months earlier, she had given birth to her own daughter, now she was listening to the labored bleats of her goat alongside the rumble of trucks rolling in to lay concrete nearby. Moschou said, “It was a construction orgasm going on next door.” As she recounted her tale, however, her humor faded, “Is there space for me here,” she wondered, “or am I eventually going to be chased away?” Moschou, 42, is one of the many small-scale farmers throughout the Cyclades who fear for their livelihoods due to the threats posed by overtourism and climate change.

On the rocky hills of the island of Paros, Moschou spoke with me, wearing all pink, down to her rubber Birkenstocks. With 63 sheep and 203 goats, caring for the farm is an intense job. Mornings on the farm start at 8 a.m. after taking care of her daughter, and consist of two rounds of milking and other chores that often last until 11 p.m. But Moschou says, “It doesn’t feel like work.” She remembers summers spent with her grandmother on their farm, where her love of caring for animals and cheesemaking began. As I kissed the soft fur of one of her newborn goats and watched baby chicks following closely behind their mother on Moschou’s farm, I could easily see why. Cats lounge in the sun against the backdrop of blue ocean water as goats climb the rocky hillside; a scene disrupted by the villas below.

In the eight years Moschou has operated her farm, development on the island has exploded. “It was so sudden and so big, everything started being constructed all around,” she said. According to Moschou, nearby owners have harassed her over the smells and sounds coming from the farm. 

This tension mirrors a broader crisis of overtourism in the Cycladic islands, including Paros, which is home to approximately 14,000 permanent residents, but sees 32 times that number arrive during the summer months. In 2024, Paros issued the most building permits in the Cyclades. Giorgios Lialios, chief reporter on overdevelopment at eKathimerini, explained one of the reasons that development is so damaging in Greece is because, “In Greece, under certain circumstances, you can build pretty much everywhere,” leaving farmland especially vulnerable. 

The rise of tourism has put pressure on the island’s water, land, and culture. “Sun and sea tourists,” as Nicolas Stephanou of Save Paros calls them, often overlook the lives and traditions of locals. One of these traditions being ignored is Cycladic cheesemaking, a centuries-long practice that Moschou inherited from her grandmother. In 2024, it was recognized as a part of Greece’s intangible heritage, but recognition does not guarantee survival. 

Moschou, who studied agronomy, explained that the Cycladic climate, characterized by dryness and an abundance of herbs, contributes to the cheese’s distinct, rich taste. The goats and sheep adapted to the environment produce less milk, but offer greater flavor. 

At around 6 p.m., she began her hour-and-a-half milking routine, changing her clothes from pink to grey. In Moschou’s stable, silver and blue milking machines await her animals, who have been trained to line up in the chutes. As she works, she discusses the challenges of farming in the changing climate. To deal with rising temperatures, she has extended shade over her barn, but even that hasn’t been enough for her sheep, which she plans to sell due to their sensitivity and complicated herd dynamics. But it is not all negative. She has switched from feeding her animals with water-intensive clover to Parian barley. “Barley is a win-win,” she said. “It’s cheaper. It requires less water, and even though it makes the goats produce less milk, it’s more tasty.” 

Moschou’s farm is a living example of perseverance in the face of climate change and overdevelopment. Farming is essential not only to keeping culture alive but also for the longevity of the island. “We cannot only rely on tourism,” said Paros’ Mayor Kostas Bizas, “It comes and it goes.” Paros must be prepared for when the next island goes viral or climate change worsens, and to survive, it will depend on people like Moschou, who know and love the land.