President of the Hellenic Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou opens conference on climate resilience, stresses need to support Thrace

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President of the Hellenic Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou on Friday emphasised the need to support Thrace as she declared the start of the two-day conference on “Climate Resilience and Local Community”, organised in Alexandroupolis by the Eugenides Foundation following her own initiative.

She called for everyone’s contribution so that “Thrace is revitalised and remains a symbold of beauty, diversity and resilience in the coming generations,” one year after the destructive forest fires in Evros that had “put Thrace at the epicentre of climate change, one of the greatest threats of our age.”

Sakellaropoulou stressed the urgency of supporting the people of Thrace whose livelihoods had been destroyed by the Dadia Forest fire, and to keep young people in the area.
“It is urgent to support resilience, in other words the capability of recovering normal operation once the crisis is past. Resilience that obviously depends on economic factors, such as generous financial support, that is targeted and effective. It also depends on social factors, however, such as solidarity between all sides,” she pointed out.

Noting the need to cultivate environmental awareness and ecological sensitivity, saying that these were the “core of a new political position and stance”, while noting that the “the scale of the natural destruction is proportionate to our share of responsibility.”

Talking about efforts to tackle climate change, Sakellaropoulou said the scientific community has clearly warned of the danger of insufficient preparation and demonstrated that the cost of inaction is far greater than the cost of prevention.

“We now know what is required to handle the problem: cooperation and coordination, generous economic support, especially of the most vulnerable, and an end to our dependence on fossil fuels with a shift to green energy solutions and sustainable economic practices,” she said.

Source: ANA-MPA