Skylakis: “We have secured 2 billion euros to rehabilitate the islands from carbon dioxide”

The Government’s commitments to protect Greek people were set out by the Minister for Environment and Energy, during his intervention in the 11th Annual “World Ocean Summit” of “Economist”, held in Lisbon (11-13 March). In order to save the oceans and seas, Mr.Theodoros Skylakis addressed a call to participate in the “Our Ocean Conference 2024”, which will take place in Athens (16-17 April), where important, related commitments will be pursued by the dozens of governments that have announced that they will participate in it. The Minister also stressed the importance of the sea for Greece, from an economic and social point of view, since nearly 20% of the world’s commercial fleet is Greek owned, while tourism contributes significantly to Greek GDP. Mr. Skylakis, as part of the conference, announced specific commitments to protect the oceans, saying: We have already stated that by 2030, 10% of our seas will not be allowed to fish. We will extend the marine protected areas to cover 30% of our seas by 2025. A state-of-the-art control and patrol system will effectively monitor them. We will restore 30% of degraded marine areas by 2030 . We commit to reducing marine plastic waste by 50% , and microplastics by 30% by 2030. We have secured and will allocate capitals of EUR 2 billion for the rehabilitation of our islands from energy sources using carbon dioxide. “These commitments will be the catalyst for further action,” stressed Mr Skylakakis, urging all partners to submit respective ambitious voluntary commitments before and during the Conference.