The recent developments and the remaining uncertainty about the fate of the Akamas Local Plan (Communities), amid conditions of pre-election side effects and expediencies that risk erasing the undoubted legal obligations of the Republic of Cyprus, highlight problems of inadequacy of the environmental policy and the required coordination, says the organization Friends of Akamas.
In today's announcement, the organization also notes that the apparent intentions of the Minister of the Interior to neutralize even the binding (but insufficient) terms of the Environmental Opinion confirm the inability to understand how the well-intentioned development of the Peninsula is inextricably linked to the protection of the environment and its biodiversity and the strengthening of its communities.
“In any case, only the Environmental Authority can examine and evaluate whether the conditions, which it set, have been essentially met”, he adds.
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The organization calls on the competent Ministers of the Environment and the Interior, beyond and independently of the current pre-election situation, to demonstrate the necessary political will and cooperate, with the aim of upgrading the protection status of the Peninsula into a real National Park – within and beyond the narrow limits of the State Forest – on the one hand removing all obstacles that interfere with this positive effect lixi, such as e.g. hunting and illegalities, and on the one hand creating appropriate sustainable infrastructures and ecological management practices, both of the Park and of the wider area.
