AKEL on World Environment Day
To ensure a quality of life for all huge steps need to be taken
4th June 2021, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia
This year’s World Environment Day finds our planet burning, being turned into a desert and plagued by the biggest pandemic in decades, causing huge losses.
World Environment Day finds our country, nature and its people in an adverse position. The Anastasiades/DISY government has not only failed to protect the environment in our country, but is intensifying its destruction.
The licensing of development projects/work to serve big private capital in the construction sector is leading to the destruction of important habitats, protected areas and beaches. At the same time, development plans are being prepared within the Akamas National Park. Polluting factories continue to operate next to residential areas. The European Union is making constant recommendations pointing out the failure to protect our habitats.
On an international level, the climate crisis is rapidly deteriorating and intensifying the destruction of the planet, primarily due to the enormous abuse of natural resources and as a result of the reckless action of multinational companies.
World Environment Day is not a day for making proclamations and issuing grandiose pledges. It is a day that must remind us that in order to ensure a quality of life for all of us in Cyprus and around the world, huge steps need to be taken.
It is a day that reminds us that some people are living on the poverty live in Third World countries without any access to clean drinking water, whilst some of our fellow citizens live next to factories that pollute the air people breathe.
World Environment Day this year more than ever before confirms the need for policies that should aim at the restoration of the ecosystem, the protection of the environment and ensuring environmental and social justice.
AKEL’s goal is not only the adoption of new policies through legislation, but also the adoption of radical changes in the way environmental problems are tackled, so we can create a world where we shall all be safe.
