PREFACE

Climate change and the global biodiversity crisis are causing both scientists and citizens to have second thoughts about post-war development. Today we are revisiting the post-war certainty about the type of economic growth we called ‘development’, about markets and urban population concentrations.

The Green Institute finds that there are significant existing capacities and dimensions related to combating climate change, many of which were displaced and sidelined in the post-war era. Today we discover that in Greece and Europe there are no coherent agricultural policies including the spectrum of EU agro-ecosystems. There is neither a national strategy nor a national vision adapted to the needs and historical trajectory of agroforestry areas and the country’s particular cultural landscapes. Currently, it seems that the transformations and adjustments imposed after the war make Greece increasingly vulnerable to climate change. Land uses which were segregated after the war, both in cities and the countryside, are now being re-examined. Agroforestry and productive reforestation, which traditionally existed in the Mediterranean, are today juxtaposed against the regime of industrialized agriculture-forestry-livestock.

In recent years, the Green Institute has launched a systematic campaign on such issues, which has met with the impressive and immediate response from the Greek scientific community. The series of conferences in 2021 and the accompanying publication on ‘productive reforestation for living rural landscapes’, with the participation of 20 university and expert scientists, are an important scientific milestone. The publication of the book “Climate Change - Preparing Thessaly” also brings to the foreground the new viewpoint required by the times we live in. The 2022 “Climate Change Regional Adaptation Plans” involved the organization of 4 Regional conferences, with the participation of 24 scientists, academics, NGOs, EU specialists and regional/local government representatives. These conferences highlighted the inadequacies of planning from Region to Region and the outdated logic with which climate change is addressed.

We had the same positive response with the book you are holding in your hands. We planned to develop the theme of revitalizing agroforestry landscapes with 20 authors, but scientific enthusiasm forced us to double these. Why is there so much enthusiasm by the scientific community? One answer is that scientific findings from all disciplines clearly indicate the dead ends of the policies being implemented, but also the need for a new innovative system of ideas and policies to replace the old, maladaptive regime. Scientists realize that today’s policies cannot mean greenwashing and business as usual. If this interpretation is true, then there is hope.

The Green Institute deplores the non-implementation of forest sub-measure 8.2. of the Agricultural Development Plan since 2007 for the installation and revival of agroforestry systems. It also deplores the mismanagement of water, the destructive management of agricultural resources, the non-functioning of the National Commission to Combat Desertification and the cancelation of the National Strategy for Forests (2021-2038), which placed a special emphasis on Mediterranean Forestry and was replaced by a ‘National Reforestation Program’ without any measures to restore the country’s agroforestry landscapes. The Green Institute understands and emphasizes the current value of landscape, agroforestry, productive reforestation, agricultural extensions, agricultural education, the careful balance of water supply and demand in hydrological basins, terraces on sloping lands and the key role that local actors can play.

The Green Institute is not only interested in adapting to climate change. It is also interested in increasing the resilience of all life support systems, including the support of local communities.

Ilias Gianniris President of the Green Institute, Greece