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Description
The targeted advocacy campaign "Priority to Nature" of the environmental think tank “The Green Tank” aims to influence the new political framework to halt the loss of biodiversity, with an emphasis on Greece.
Biodiversity loss is a crisis unfolding before our eyes. It is paramount to take immediate measures to reverse the trends that lead not only to the mass extinction of species but also to consequences detrimental to our own survival.
The timing and political context is opportune as a new policy framework for biodiversity conservation in expected to be agreed and adopted at international and European levels in 2020. However, nature protection in Greece is not a political agenda priority and the topic is largely absent from the public discourse.
The project will include documentation, advocacy and communication actions. In particular, through analyzing and substantiating proposals, meetings to inform public authorities at political and administrative levels, participating in consultation processes and participating in the public debate, by collaborating with the media, the Green Tank aims to support and influence the decision-making processes on the conservation of biodiversity. It is expected that these actions will strengthen biodiversity conservation policy, with Greece taking a more active role and exploiting the potential to influence European and international developments while at the same time renewing its own national policy framework to protect its unique nature.
Summary of project results
The Green Tank assessed the implementation of the Greek National Biodiversity Strategy, since its approval in 2014 until 2020 as well as its first Biodiversity Action Plan. The analysis and conclusions of the Green Tank compose the report entitled "Priority in Nature: An assessment of the implementation of the Greek National Strategy for Biodiversity", which presents the analysis results in a well-documented and understandable way, based on a methodology used by international and European organizations. The report also presents the most important international and European developments regarding biodiversity conservation policy. The report concludes with a series of recommendations that have already been forwarded to decision-makers and relevant public services.
In particular, the Green Tank analysis concludes that no significant progress has been made on any of the 13 general objectives or the 39 specific objectives of the Greek National Biodiversity Strategy. In 12 of the 39 goals the progress is negligible. Although Greece is no exception compared to other countries in terms of the inadequacy and ineffectiveness of measures to address biodiversity loss, the report emphasizes that it is imperative for the country to acquire a national biodiversity policy on a par with its natural richness.
In fact, the timing is right, as a new post 2020 biodiversity policy framework is emerging at the global level, while the European Green Deal, which was announced in December 2019, set biodiversity conservation at the heart of the EU’s new development strategy. Hence it would be appropriate for Greece to be in line with international developments and ensure that the new Action Plan is adopted prior to the UN Biodiversity Convention Conference of the Parties (COP15), which was postponed, due to the pandemic, from October 2020 to May 2021.
The Action Plan must also be prepared in a timely manner in order to provide direction for the utilization of the funds of the new programming period 2021-as well as the Recovery and Resilience Fund. After all, only in this way, can the commitment to a green recovery after the crisis caused by COVID-19 be realized.
Greece, being one of the countries that strongly supported the European Green Deal must now act on its commitments and give priority to nature. The conclusions and recommendations of the Green Tank report can contribute towards this direction.