Category: Week 3

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.

efood has landed on Paros. Its couriers have traversed far more than restaurant doors and seaside roads.

By Noah LaBelle

Zahid Mehmood couldn’t remember the last time he’d done anything but walk and sleep. Nineteen days earlier, he’d set out from Karachi, Pakistan, on foot, before crossing into Turkey. It was December 2015, just before European borders began to tighten. Soon, his feet could take him no further. On the Greek island of Kos—just 4 kilometers off the Turkish coast—he boarded a three-meter boat, crammed with thirteen others, bound for the port of Piraeus.

Once Mehmood made it safely to Athens, he heard that another nineteen people had died attempting the same passage after him. He could only thank God—and the UN, which clothed, fed, and put him up in a hotel for a week. It took him another two months to land a construction gig, the same work he’d done since age fifteen in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. 

This May, Mehmood’s boat ride was much less treacherous: a high-speed ferry to Paros, where he now delivers takeout by motorcycle.

“Athens has too much heat,” he told me on a recent Thursday afternoon. “Here, I have the sea. There’s not too much traffic, not too much pollution. It’s a very peaceful place.” He was lounging on a semi-circular stone bench outside the Paros Byzantine Museum with three other couriers in red efood vests, refreshing their food delivery apps. “It’s like a shared office!” Mehmood, thirty, said, a fanny pack slung over his shoulder. They’d clocked in at noon and would stay until ten. In the distance, another ferry pulled in, spilling visitors and their suitcases.

efood launched on Paros this summer. Mehmood stepped away from the scaffolding in 2020, when pandemic lockdowns impelled a food delivery boom. Now, he and eleven other Pakistanis working for efood in Athens have relocated to the island, where they share two villas. They’ve arrived just in time for high season—July through August—when Paros overflows with Greeks and foreigners alike. By September, they’ll return to the mainland.

Tourists come with their culinary tastes, and leave Paros with less of its own. “There are not that many tavernas—it’s my main problem, seriously,” Sophia Katsipi, the president of the Realtors Association of Paros and Antiparos, said. “To go to these little tavernas with the beautiful, local produce…I don’t want to see another sushi place. I’ve had enough.”

While locals may think the island is oversaturated, investors often argue new restaurants or hotels will create jobs for Parians. “But this island doesn’t suffer from unemployment,” Costas Bizas, the mayor of Paros, told me. “So who will you create new jobs for, and how are you going to find those people to work for you?”

The answer, often, is men like Mehmood. (There are enough Pakistanis, Afghans, and Bengalis on the island to field a cricket match on Sundays from six to eight or nine, depending on the number of overs.) What sold Mehmood on moving to Paros was what drew him to efood in Athens, and what pushed him to leave Pakistan: the pay. “After one day of work, it’s finished if you have two people [to provide for],” he said of his hometown.

That didn’t include the heat. In Islamabad, he worked outside, always, on two-story shells that trapped the humidity. In Athens’ high-rises, less sweltering but sweltering still, he sometimes worked indoors. The salary was fixed at seventy euros for eight hours. efood paid a tad better, with looser hours, and no dust. On Paros, his pay doubled to meet the island’s costs. “Now I care for all of my family,” he said: seven siblings, and his parents, his father retired from electrical work.

“If I have papers, I’ll go back and get married,” Mehmood said. That’s proven challenging. He’s been waiting since April 2024 for his third country national application to be approved. “I have nine years of proof, tax proof, doctors notes,” he said. “Maybe it will happen. I don’t know. God only knows.”

The next day, I returned to the pine-shaded area where Mehmood and his crew spend the majority of their waking hours, but he was nowhere to be found. A smattering of cigarette butts lay inside the stone semicircle. Some of his colleagues had draped cardboard sheets over it, more comfortable for long stints.

Soon, Mehmood returned, fresh off a delivery. “It’s a tourist speaking English,” he told me. “His order is eleven euro, but in his mind, it’s ten euro fifty.” Mehmood informed him, and got an apology with the missing coins. As he showed me the receipt on his iPhone, a ping sounded, twice, arpeggiated.

“Oh my God,” he exhaled. He’d been seated for ninety seconds, tops. (The day prior, I hadn’t seen him get a single order during a multi-hour conversation.) Now, onto Orange Cafe, for two coffees and a sandwich. Seventeen euros. He’d earn two forty-seven.

He crossed the street, quick but unhurried. On a side road, motorcycles clustered among parked cars, their red efood boxes ratcheted on tight. One was his, bought last year for €4,200, with an Apple sticker on the front fender.

“I must be careful,” he said, unzipping the box to reveal his helmet. “In Athens, I left helmets on my bike, twice, then I came back: no helmet.”

“I’ll come back, I’ll come back,” he reassured me. “Only just four, five minutes.” The engine revved. He didn’t flip down his visor. Then he was gone—a right at the roundabout, before the coffee could cool. ♦

The crop that has defined Naxos for centuries is disappearing. What happens next?

by Vivien Wong

On a Tuesday afternoon in late June, sixty-year-old potato farmer Stelios Vathrakokoilis gestured with his cigarette lighter to a well some hundred yards from the field where he stood. “There is water there still,” he said. “In fifteen days, it will be dry.” In 2023, Vathrakokoilis planted seventeen acres of potatoes. That changed last year, when the wells on his land ran dry. “I didn’t plant a thing,” he said. “Nothing, nothing, nothing.” 

Vathrakokoilis and his brother, loading crates of potatoes from the morning’s harvest into his own nearby pickup, come from a long line of potato farmers on Naxos, the largest and most fertile of the Greek Cycladic islands. Here, no agricultural product is more famous than the buttery Naxian potato. But recent waves of drought have dried up the supply of water to farms across Naxos. Now, as the island’s potato production dwindles, the future of its producers hangs in the balance. 

Vathrakokoilis and his brother grew up in the nineties, when, according to Vathrakokoilis, “farmer parents didn’t want their children to have to endure the same pain and suffering they had.” In his late teens, his father sent him to school to learn English, hoping he’d pursue college instead of potato farming. But he constantly skipped class. “To flirt with chicks,” he added. “And then I fell madly in love with potatoes.”

Dimitris Kapounis, president of the Union of Agricultural Cooperatives of Naxos, considers the potato a kind of “ambassador” for the island. For the past decade, the island has drawn thousands of visitors for the annual Naxos Potato Festival, one of the most popular gastronomic festivals in the Aegean. During the most recent festival in 2019, Naxos broke the Guinness World Record for the largest quantity of fried potatoes served at once: 625 kilograms, or 0.7 tons. At the time, Naxos was producing over seven million kilograms of potatoes per year. This past year, according to Kapounis, the island has produced less than three thousand kilograms—about two to three tons. 

“It’s not my fault, nor God’s, nor nature’s,” Vathrakokoilis said when I visited his brother’s farm recently. “My question is, where is the human intervention?” Last year, there was a shortage of rainfall across the Mediterranean. After the wells dried up, the island’s mayor, Dimitris Lianos, announced that desalination units would treat enough sea water to “cover the shortfall for houses, hotels and pools.” A relief for the tourists who flocked to Naxos—in record numbers—last year. Farmers were less lucky. 

This year, Vathrakokoilis plans to use salty water for irrigation when his well dries up. That’s what he did last year. “It ruins the quality of the agricultural products,” he said. “But in the end, that’s what we’re going to use.”

Without a stable income from farming, Vathrakokoilis said his family has relied partly on wages earned by his children, who work his brother-in-law’s potato packaging factory. They’re twins—a boy and a girl—in high school. They’re the same age Vathrakokoilis was when he fell in love with potatoes. 

The boy has demonstrated interest in potato farming. “He can do it if he combines a stable job with free time in the field,” Vathrakokoilis said. Like his parents did before him, Vathrakokoilis doesn’t see a future where his children can rely on farming as a primary job. 

As for the potato fields his children will inherit, Vathrakokoilis hopes they might one day revamp the farmland as a tourist attraction—agrotourism, perhaps. “A secure income,” he added, “because I believe that tourism will never stop as long as there is sun and sea.”

Leaning over the bed of his Ford pickup, he relit his cigarette, took a drag, and let out a nostril of smoke. “Tourism is fine. Hotels and rooms to live are fine. Tourists are fine. We all profit from that,” he said. “But somehow we have to combine the rooms to live with a restaurant that doesn’t serve a steak that comes from France, but a steak that comes from this island.” ♦

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.”

The story of one farmer’s fight against the Greek island’s ongoing drought

by Isabella Dail

 Stelios Vathrakokoilis awakens at 6:00 AM to spray the fields with pesticides and weed killers. The 60-year-old works a potato farm on the island of  Naxos, Greece, alongside a few other employees. 

His days are long. He often goes to bed after midnight so he can first water the crops in the evening. With such a small workforce, he can spend 10 hours in the fields per day during the harvest season.

In recent years, Vathrakokoilis’s hard labor has only gotten harder as heat and drought threaten Naxos’s agricultural industries. In the late morning of June 24, the sun already blazed down on the tractor that trundled across the field and scooped potatoes into plastic bins. Vathrakokoilis seemed unconcerned that the truck he leaned against was searing to the touch. The prickly pear cacti dotting the field’s perimeter occasionally turned grey and withered.

Vathrakokoilis relies on farming for his livelihood. Last year, he couldn’t harvest any potatoes at all.

Naxos was an island once known for its staple crops. Now, as the agricultural industries are crumbling to heat and drought, a growing tourism industry has brought in new visitors, replaced potato fields with swimming pools, and disrupted local economies and lifestyles.

The island’s largest reservoir is desiccated, and a shortage of rainfall persists. Naxos’s average temperature in the summer has risen by about 4 degrees in the last 50 years. Due to the lack of available fresh water, sea water fills the wells used to irrigate farmland, damaging crop health.

“Water scarcity is a very big problem,” said Giorgios Lialios, an environmental journalist at Greece’s leading newspaper.

The drought isn’t Vathrakokoilis’s only concern. He says that the remaining water on the island isn’t directed primarily to him. Instead, it’s going to the tourism industry.

Naxos has become a prime tourist destination, boasting the ruins of the temple of Apollo, a series of resorts decked with quaint villas, and the freshness of its remaining crops. While farmers complain of little water, swimming pools materialize across the island, and trendy resorts maintain expansive gardens. Employees in the industry argue that tourism is essential for the Naxian economy, even agricultural sectors.

“If the hotels do not work in the summer, the farmers do not work in the winter,” Irene Lianou, the Reservations Manager at the Lianos Village Hotel, said.

In fact, the hotel has married agriculture and tourism, opening a farm that both supports the hotel’s kitchen and appeals to patrons. They offer zucchini, nectarines, and–of course–potatoes from their farm for customers.

“All the jobs here, on this island, are involved in tourism,” Lianou said.

Yet the agricultural industry on a whole seems impossible to sustain in light of the island’s current climate conditions. According to Dimitris Kapounis, President of the Union of Agricultural Cooperatives of Naxos, Naxos once produced over 13,000 tons (12,000,000 kilograms) of potatoes annually. In recent years, that number has plummeted to somewhere between 2 to 3 tons. 

Vathrakokoilis believes that the challenges facing farmers could improve, but it would require local authorities to step in. He hopes that a system which cleans sewage water for irrigation will be implemented. For now, he fears the well he uses will dry up within the next week. If the situation doesn’t improve, he may be unable to continue doing the job he loves.

If a solution to the drought doesn’t occur in the land once known for its potatoes, Vathrakokoilis believes that “in a few years there will be no agricultural production on this 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.

By Mara DuBois 

“This was one of my favorite beaches 20 years ago,” Nicolas Stephanou said as he stepped through a narrow gap in the stone and wood fence enclosing Faragas Beach Bar on the Cycladic island of Paros, Greece. 

It was a scorching June day, and the only way to access this once-secluded public beach was to walk through the bar—a sprawling structure that didn’t exist a decade ago. 

Stephanou, who has lived on Paros for 40 years, passed confidently by the hostesses and through the arrangement of restaurant tables, emerging onto the sunbaked sand. To his left, scattered towels lay haphazardly on the open beach. To his right, five neat rows and 11 columns of square umbrellas shaded matching sets of sunbeds. 

This split view represents a small victory in a much larger battle. In 2023, Stephanou and other members of the Paros Citizens’ Movement successfully pushed for enforcement of a national law requiring businesses to leave at least 50% of every beach unoccupied for public use—a policy now visibly upheld at Faragas. 

While abiding by this law, Faragas Beach Bar represents a growing threat facing the island: overconstruction fueled by booming tourism. 

According to data from Greece’s statistics agency, Paros had 349 new building permits in 2024, more than any other island in the Cyclades for the fifth year in a row. Most of these permits support the construction of hotels, vacation apartments, or other businesses in the tourism industry like Faragas Beach Bar.  

The Cyclades, already vulnerable to the effects of climate change, are negatively impacted by the environmental cost of this development. 

“Water scarcity is a very big problem in the whole of the Cycladic Islands,” said Giorgos Lalios, a reporter who covers overtourism for the Greek daily Kathimerini. 

Paros’s water supply is a concern of Stephanou. While the island is relatively well-off compared to its neighbors like Naxos, Stephanou warns that it’s approaching its limit. 

“There’s an incredible waste of water,” he said, pointing to the proliferation of swimming pools and the use of non-native plants in hotel gardens which require excessive watering.

Paros Mayor Kostas Bizas agreed, identifying the effects of overconstruction as the island’s most pressing issue. However, his office has limited power to meaningfully address the issue. He has sent proposals to the central government to limit construction but is pessimistic about prospects for change. 

“The government doesn’t seem very willing to listen to what we are saying,” Bizas said. 

With local authority constrained, responsibility has fallen to groups like the Paros Citizens’ Movement to suppress the irreversible climate impacts of overdevelopment. Their 2023 beach movement drew over 300 local supporters and gained wide media attention. But their latest focus on limiting new construction has been more difficult. 

“Everyone was with the Citizens’ Movement for the beaches,” Stephanou said. “This is a bit more controversial.” 

Why? Because limiting construction threatens local livelihoods tied to the island’s large tourism industry. The movement now consists of a core group of about 20 activists. 

Still, their efforts have yielded results. 

The Citizens’ Movement has taken to court new building projects in an effort to mitigate the threats to Paros’s water supply. In two cases, the court decided to freeze construction on new developments.

“At least this is working,” Stephanou said.

However, Stephanou remains worried. Having experienced the detrimental effects of the tourism boom on Paros first-hand, he warned, “Eventually, tourism can kill tourism.” 

The clock is ticking. If development continues unchecked, Bizas believes tourists will stop visiting the island due to crowds and traffic. When this happens, investors would likely abandon Paros as its quality-of-life declines under the weight of climate change. 

“Locals will have to stay back with ghost villas,” he said.