Concrete weighs heavily on Mediterranean coast

Seals endangered

NICOSIA, July 10, (AFP): Across the Mediterranean, from an illegally-built hotel in a Spanish nature park to a holiday complex encroaching on Lebanon’s salt flats, a tourism boom is threatening precious coastal ecosystems.

With 46,000 kms (29,000 miles) of coastline spread across 21 countries, the Mediterranean hosts over a quarter of global tourism — but that comes at a cost to the planet.

“The current tourism model is highly unsustainable,” says Plan Bleu, a UN-affiliated body for environment and development in the Mediterranean.

It estimates that arrivals have surged from 58 million in 1970 to 324 million in 2015, and could rise to 500 million by 2030. The body has warned that future growth will exacerbate “already critical environmental pressures ... in coastal and marine ecosystems”.

The region’s population is also growing, surging from 32 million in 1970 to 75 million in 2000 on the Mediterranean’s southern and eastern shores.

While legislation in some countries has improved coastal protection, abuses persist.

Spain’s 8,000-km coastline has suffered multiple pressures, starting with a construction boom in the 1970s and another bubble ahead of the global property market crash in 2008.

A 21-storey hotel built against beachside hills in a protected nature park in Algarrobico is a symbol of illegal construction in the early 21st century.

Condemned to demolition by the Supreme Court, the 15-year-old hotel “remains standing because multiple lawsuits are underway”, including to determine whether owner Azata del Sol should be compensated, Greenpeace Spain’s Pilar Marcos told AFP.

In Lebanon, it’s hard to go to the beach without paying private resort owners who control the coast.

Marcos

Illegally

In 2012, a Lebanese government report said about five million square metres of coastline is illegally built on.

Only 20 percent of the coastline is now freely accessible, says Jad Tabet, head of Lebanon’s order of engineers.

Yet another new tourist complex in the northern Anfeh region has raised fears among environmentalists.

Called Natour Resort, it threatens one of the oldest salt flats in the Mediterranean in an archaeologically rich area that also boasts the “cleanest water on the Lebanese coast”, says marine biologist Sammy Joe Lycha.

A 1986 “coastal law” in France protects around 15,000 kms of coastline in France and its overseas territories from urbanisation “despite land pressure”, says Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot.

Lawmakers recently sought to review the legislation — provoking an outcry that forced them to retreat. But abuses have not stopped. On the island of Corsica, environmental defence association “U Levante” has after 20 years won a court order to demolish a coastal villa built by a wealthy Swiss investor.

The Coastal Conservancy, a public body that encourages sustainable tourism, has protected 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of inland lakes and shoreline in mainland France.

It’s a model Francisco Torres Alfosea, a geography professor at Alicante University, hopes Spain will adopt.

It’s also the envy of environmentalists in Cyprus, who are campaigning against a development they say threatens sea caves that are home to endangered monk seals.

Meanwhile, in a string of caves along the coast of Cyprus, a colony of monk seals — the most endangered mammals in the Mediterranean — have found refuge.

But now environmentalists and residents are accusing developers of endangering the seals’ habitat, by building luxury villas on top of the caves.

Numbering only around 300 in the Mediterranean, they were christened “monk seals” in the late eighteenth century by a scientist who thought they bore a resemblance to a monk dressed in a hood.

Sanctuary

Most are found in Greek waters. But tucked under white rocks by the town of Peyia in southwest Cyprus, caves provide sanctuary to some of the seven to 10 monk seals found in Cypriot waters, according to the government.

Standing on a coastal path, Peyia resident Mandie Davies pointed to a construction site of six part-finished villas above the caves. “It’s a monstrosity,” she told AFP. One of the building projects is around 25 metres (yards) from the shore, lamented Peyia Mayor Marinos Lambrou — one of many here to oppose a government green light for the villas.

Monk seals are crucial “for the ecosystem’s balance”, said Melina Marcou, a government scientist who swims in the caves and monitors the creatures with hidden cameras.

But the seals’ habitat is so sensitive Marcou urges the public to avoid the caves.

Their numbers diminished through centuries of being disturbed by fishermen, the mammals abandoned beaches over-exploited by humans.

More recently, urbanisation and tourism have been the key drivers of the seals’ decline, said Marie-Aude Sevin, who works for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, an authority on monk seals and their numbers.

Cypriot law provides for a protection zone stretching 91 metres back from the shore, slightly less than the 100 metres recommended by the UN and EU.

But the Environment Ministry says even the government’s own rule does not apply to the six villas — a position contested by scientists and ecologists.

A source close to the case told AFP the Environment Ministry approved the villas on the basis of outdated maps.

This meant it failed to take into account the effect of erosion, working on the basis that the plots are further from the shore than in reality, the source added.

Another expert, Klitos Papastylianou from the Initiative for the Protection of the Natural Coastline, alleged that there was no adequate environmental impact study during the planning process, contravening an EU directive.

For Linda Leblanc, a municipal councillor in Peyia, the villas are a “terrible testament to the failure” of the government’s environmental policy.

The area only became eligible for construction after a decree signed by a former interior minister, 10 days before a 2008 presidential election and the end of his tenure, according to multiple sources.

The decree and construction on Peyia’s coast are still under scrutiny by parliament.