It is with great emotion that I address this speech today, which is the last one from this platform, completing my appointment by the President of the Republic, Mr.Nicos Anastasiades. An appointment for which, as a state official, I owe enormous gratitude and sincere thanks for honouring me with his trust, cooperation and support, during a thoroughly difficult and particularly demanding five years during which there was no shortage of challenges, difficulties and setbacks, most notably the coronavirus pandemic crisis.
Mr President, as Environment Commissioner, I thank you for activating every mechanism of Green Diplomacy and taking the Climate Change Initiative in our geographical neighbourhood of the Eastern Mediterranean and wider Middle East. Our region, which is a global red zone in terms of the speed and impact of the climate crisis, now has, thanks to your contribution, a scientific manual for managing and predicting the phenomena and is capable of supporting and assisting the next governments of our country by taking the right political decisions, either preventing or dealing with the phenomena.
Our State now has budgets for the Environment: 75 investments and 58 reforms have been included in the Cyprus Recovery and Resilience Plan, supported by €1.006 billion in grants and €0.2 billion in loans. 41% of the plan will support climate goals and 23% will promote digital transition. The total resources from all funds earmarked for the Green Transition is 2.4 billion with 1.9 billion exclusively for Climate actions.
We now have all the tools at our disposal to create the conditions to adapt with nature and it is up to all of us, each of us collectively and individually, to measure our rights, but also our obligations, so that we as humanity can hope for better days.
Upon assuming my duties as Commissioner for the Environment, I asked for and received two months to organize the Office in a way that would make our work efficient and beneficial. Just as we were getting geared up and fired up, in March 2020 we had our first absolute and universal lockdown. Priorities changed, needs, demands and obligations grew, but our stubbornness did not diminish.
For many years, wrongly, we approached environmental issues one-dimensionally and unidimensionally. During these three years, we went into schools and universities, business centres and local government bodies, youth centres and environmental bodies trying to educate and train, to inform and inform ourselves by bringing together proposals, problems, but also to give solutions, to propose solutions, to cooperate and help each other because otherwise this whole project cannot go far. Nature's ecosystem networks as communicating vessels are similar to those of human activity and where action is recorded, there is reaction. No one can be left out of the equation.
We knew early on that we would have to choose the battles we wanted to win by measuring our technical strengths and the nature of the Office. We never ignored any of the complaints that came to our Office, while our physical presence in a number of activities is documented.
Today is a day of celebration as the Environmental Awards, which we are organizing for yet another year in collaboration with the CECI, brings to the surface beautiful efforts and activities both on behalf of local government and the business community.
As an evaluation committee we had a hard time scoring the projects you will see today and we sincerely want to congratulate each and every one of the participants in this celebration, but it also becomes an example of best practice for others to follow.
Personally, I would like to thank each and every one of you for your good work and cooperation all this time, the wonderful team of my Office, Athena Grigoriadou and Kyriakos Siakalli for the great load we carried as a small team, but also Xenios Agathokleous and Marios Efthymiou with whom we started but had to return to their services, and Anastasia, my Secretary during the first year.
Special thanks to KYKPEE, His Eminence Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol and Nicolaos of Amathus and their scientific team led by their excellent collaborator Andreas Hadjichampis and Dimitra for all the hard work that brought us here today.
Mr. President, I cannot conclude my last statement from this platform without addressing you personally and wishing you all the best for the future. From the bottom of my heart, I wish you rest and enjoy your family that you have been deprived and deprived of for so many years and measure your next steps. I am sure that a spirit as restless as yours cannot easily rest. From you I retain your highly intelligent and witty sense of humor, the passion with which you handled each and every issue that passed through your office, even issues that should not have been of concern to you, the strength you showed in the loss of dear and valued colleagues, and especially every interruption I experienced in Cabinet to ask what happened with that baby's health, that soldier's problem, the issue with that family, and the genuine concern that was reflected in your expression in every answer from the relevant Ministers. Always grateful Mr. President.
(PM/EP)
Contents of this article including associated images are owned by PIO
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or PIO
Source
