I'm reassured about the efforts to protect nature

Tell us a bit about yourself. Who’s Alex?

My name is Alex and I am 22 years old and I am Cypriot born, Greek raised. 

Where did your journey in environmental activism start?

Growing up, I lived outside of Athens in a very forested suburb. Forests are very vulnerable to forest fires in the summer, here in Greece. There would be a forest fire almost every year in areas near my home. As I was growing up I remember witnessing the destruction of these ecosystems. My father would take me to these places and would be very moved by what was happening, seeing the lively environment around us disappear. 

The fires happened a lot because of arson, but recognising how climate change makes them more likely is important. I think that this is what made me understand that human activities can have a significant impact on the environment around us from a young age. I became quite passionate whenever there was an event such as an attempt to reforest an area. We would go together with my school and I was keen to join any cleaning activities in the forest as well.

I also tried encouraging my friends to go and then I got involved in the school committees trying to make the school as active as possible in these areas. This is how I first got into it and then went to university. And it skyrocketed there when I saw more opportunities. 

I was very lucky to go to university in the UK. There were many student groups there that were involved in advocacy in making the university campus more sustainable. There was, for example, a group that would run and pick up trash, it’s called plugging and they would go running every week. 

I was involved with them, as well as a campaign that was focused on removing the bank Barclays from the university campus, as it is a major fossil fuel project financer. So as I was getting more and more opportunities, I really seized them as they were about things that really interested me. 

“Environmental protection, sustainability and not only environmental but also social causes helped me to see how we can come together to act and advocate for change.”

As the years passed, I felt like I got more and more stimuli that made me more and more involved. And I really appreciate that I’ve been able to see all the stimuli and I have had the time to invest in all of this.

What was your favourite project to work on?

During my time in the UK, I had made this friend, Marta. One day she contacted me and told me, Alex, I need someone to help me with the Warwick Food Cooperative. Could you come and give me a hand? And I had no idea what this Warwick Food Cooperative was. And I was already a student there for one year. 

The Warwick Food Cooperative was an initiative comprised of volunteers who where you could volunteer. They would purchase food in bulk from this organic, ethical, vegan distributor and would sell it for the same price as its cost!

When you get something in bulk, like 30 kilos of almonds, the price per kilo is lower. Then, it would be very affordable as well as environmentally friendly and healthy. The food would also come in big paper bags so people would come with their containers to buy food.

Therefore, it also reduces pollution from packaging. It was nice because it was led by volunteers and it was a cooperative. There were no managers. It was a completely horizontal system. We would have shifts together with other people, which made it fun to be on the shifts. And it was just a very nice atmosphere. We formed a beautiful group. We bonded and there would be so many customers that would come every time. Apart from these products, we also had a collaboration with local farmers who would bring vegetable boxes with their seasonal produce for only five or 10 pounds. 

You would get this vegetable box with what’s been grown literally a few miles away. We also worked with a bakery that operates in the city near our university. It was a social enterprise where refugee women baked bread. So apart from the food cooperative itself, it managed to connect us with the local community and also the marginalised community like the refugee women, as well as the local farmers. It created a platform for the community to become bigger and share its produce. It would only operate once a week on Thursdays, but it would do so much good and would give many smiles.

How do you feel about the engagement of young people in these kinds of activities in the UK compared to Greece?

I can see massive differences. And I feel like if I did not have the opportunity to go study in the UK, I would be much more limited in knowing what the possibilities are. I’ve mostly been active in the university environment. Specifically, the university environment that I was in, which is the UK and then the Netherlands. And it’s completely different compared to the experience of the people I know in Greece. 

There are not that many student initiatives created around sustainability in Greece. The universities in Greece do not have large campuses and don’t offer the same social experience. While in the UK, where you do pay a lot at the same time, it’s great as there is so much space and activities from a very organised student union. There were I think 12 or 13 sustainability-related societies in the university. They would each do their type of work, completely voluntarily. 

This was really great. There was much better infrastructure and opportunities to engage with such activities. At the same time, I think it’s also probably related to how society and maybe the economy work in more developed countries. Things run more smoothly and you don’t have to worry that much about whether you’ll be able to make enough money and live securely. And that’s where there is more space for sustainability initiatives to appear. Maybe it’s also part of the culture here, that people do not engage in these activities as much, but the economy definitely also plays a role. 

I don’t think there could be a food cooperative in a Greek university or even a student group that would organise itself to pick up trash. And sadly, there are not many things that you see here happening, but I wish for them to be here as well.

And I hope that they do appear in the following years as I feel that once they appear somewhere, these things spread into more countries as well.

What is your activism in Greece focused on?

There’s this treaty called the Energy Charter Treaty. A French NGO had a research led by a person called Mathilde Dubre and she found out that this treaty inhibits states from taking climate action because, in a few words, this treaty allows fossil fuel companies to sue governments if the government announces that they will shut their operations down.

Lawsuits appear that have to do with a lot of money and they are in private courts, not transparent at all. Therefore we don’t know what happens and how the decisions are made. But we know that a lot of money, in terms of billions of Euros, has already been awarded to fossil fuel companies through lawsuits. Of course, governments knowing that they will have to pay fossil fuel companies don’t want to announce that they will shut them down. 

So we have more fossil fuels, we have more emissions, we have more negative impacts on the climate. From the French NGO’s research, they found out that a possible way to combat this could cost a lot of money.

They joined forces with a law firm called Baldon Lawyers and with a French activist influencer, Camille Etienne, and they basically decided to try to find young people who have been affected by climate change because they would form a very good basis to claim in a court of human rights. 

So they chose the European Court of Human Rights and we are five people involved there. I got involved in this because of the forest fires that have been affecting my region. In 2021 in particular two forest fires were very close to my house and we had to evacuate our home. It was terrible, there was smoke everywhere, traffic, people trying to flee and panic and you didn’t know if you were going to be able to come back to your house and what was going to be left there. So I took a picture of my room and I took some of my belongings and I left. Luckily it was all intact, my family’s home was intact but the fire stopped about 200 meters from our house. 

Now we are in a situation where anywhere there are homes that’s where the firefighters focus on. It’s a bit ironic I guess to see how then if you go up a mountain next to my house you can see it’s all burned until where the houses start and that’s where there are trees left.

This lawsuit gave me the voice to represent the entire community here that is endangered by forest fires. It made a big impact as many media sources like Le Monde, The Guardian, and Euracative, shared articles about it, talking about five young people targeting an investment treaty because it’s quite a legal novelty to act in such a way.

There has never been a connection made with an investment treaty violating human rights. We are currently waiting for the court to decide on what is going to happen with this case and see the impact it has made. French politicians have also quoted it, encouraging the French president to withdraw from the treaty.

There is a channel that makes documentaries, it is called Arte. I think it’s a German-French channel. They created a documentary about climate loss and they featured our case too. It was a very nice opportunity that the journalists were interested in coming here. 

They visited me in my home and I showed them the burned area and I explained what has been happening in the past years and what I hope to achieve with the case. We hope that states withdraw from the Energy Charter Treaty because the court says that it does violate human rights by making states not act on climate change. So hopefully it would remove this barrier to acting on climate change. I’m very happy that I’ve been able to use my own experience in my local community, in the place where I grew up as I feel so strongly about the nature that is around here. It is the same nature that people feel like is disappearing because of the effects of climate change. 

The documentary was a very nice visual representation of the situation and hopefully, many people can watch it and see what is happening. I feel like it also puts the specific area into the spotlight. Although it has been all around the media that the entire Greece is burning, sometimes it’s nice to just hear a person’s story about how you see it changing over the years. 

What keeps you driven?

I think a very important thing for me is that from a young age, I’ve felt nature in my heart and I have felt like I am in the heart of nature. Being very close to it and also being lucky enough to grow up in a place that is surrounded by forest. I could see everything changing throughout the seasons, the massive pine trees around and all the different animals and the sounds. I felt like I was a part of it.

“Witnessing the forest fires destroying everything felt like one moment you see and you hear and you smell and you feel all this nature around you and the next moment it’s gone and everything is black and smells like burnt material and there are ashes everywhere.”

I think this was a very strong image and I’ve seen this situation taking place all around Athens throughout these past years. There is barely any forest left at this point. After this summer we have even more fires here and I think this situation has made me understand how human activities can have such destructive implications on nature. 

It also comes from my family’s belief that humans are destroying nature and from a very young age teaching me about how we need to protect it. I had these ideas for a long time and since then they have become a priority for me. 

Although I think most people do not understand, I’m reassured about the efforts to protect nature and how necessary it is to protect nature, to ultimately protect us.

Meeting other people who are engaged has been extremely good for me. For example, when I started being passionate about veganism, I remember the different vegans I met and the different things I learned from them. 

And it was a really lovely experience, every person adding something in your heart and brain that you can apply. Or any activist that I have met, I feel like they have given me a lesson. I hope that I can also be such a person for activists to come, activists in the making. If you give a voice and listen to an activist, if you give them a platform, the ideas get out and they are extremely important to be out there. For the sake of sustainability, for the sake of the world, for it to continue being what it is, or to be better than what it is. 

And I have appreciated it a lot whenever I’ve encountered people with a big smile who work for the environment, they are just huge motivational inspirations. 

What would be your message to the young people who want to get involved out there?

Don’t be afraid to take the step to get involved. Very often we might see a group doing something, an initiative, but maybe we are alone and we don’t want to go there alone and participate. We would feel better going with a friend, but then a friend doesn’t have time. So I would say: put yourself out there. Environments that have to do with environmental causes attract very friendly people. 

I also remember myself being younger and being very scared and shy. If I had to go somewhere alone, I just wouldn’t do it. I always wanted to find someone to go with. But at this point, I just go, I don’t mind if I’m alone or not. Once you go there, everything will flow more easily and you will sooner or later, get integrated into it. 

The destruction of the environment is happening all around us now. So we need to act as fast as possible. And the best time was yesterday. And if not yesterday, right now. That shows the urgency of how important it is. 

Once you take this step and get involved, you will also be grateful for giving yourself the chance to meet new people and work on something you love.