Environment, Europe, Headlines

ENVIRONMENT: Colourful Olympics Forgets Green

Sanjay Suri

ATHENS, Jul 29 2004 (IPS) - You do not have to be green by inclination to notice some simple environmental truths in Greece.

One, the bright white sunshine that brings day temperatures to 35 degrees C or so, but given the white heat you might think it even hotter than it is.

Second, you notice that the Greeks noticed, and have done something with it. It is not for nothing that Greece has one of the most advanced solar heating systems in the world.

How the Greeks have put the two together is obvious from the 12km train ride from city centre Syntagma to Irina suburb where the main Olympic stadium has been built. House after house has solar panels on roofs heating water tanks, and feeding some of the electricity. In Greece solar energy is not an idea, it is often a simple household fact.

So efficiently are solar panels used that street telephone booths are fitted with solar panels that absorb and store energy during day, and light up the phone booth at night. And the very brightness of the sun and the heat are used to cool down countless buildings by running air- conditioning systems.

Environmentalists had come to expect that Greek authorities would use this technology in the Olympics facilities, not simply to make use of the sunshine and their technology, but to showcase it to the world.

Greenpeace points out that Greek authorities had declared when Athens was a candidate city: "The Olympic Games are a challenge as well as an opportunity for the broad implementation of programmes and actions which are environmentally friendly and in accordance to the principles of sustainable development. . . . Projects will be realised with the use of environmentally friendly technologies and materials, and this will be a prerequisite in all relevant tenders."

But far from using green energy, the Olympics facilities are doing the very opposite: use of heavy air-conditioning plants using hydrofluorocarbons means greenhouse emissions that will be far more damaging than carbon dioxide.

The Olympics are unconvincingly green also quite literally. With just days to go before the Olympics are due to begin (they run Aug. 13 to Aug. 29) authorities are busy trying to turn the environment green around the stadia. But it does not seem likely that the plants being dug in at breakneck speed will last to the end of the games.

There has been little preparation of the soil, and some of the plants put in just days back have begun already to wilt.

Some shrubs put up around the outer fence seem intended more as a security screen than as green physical environment. With such little regard to natural surroundings, the otherwise impressive looking stadium seems unnaturally located.

Athens had won the bid for the Olympics seven years ago. But bulldozers and workmen are still working desperately to complete work on the main stadium and other facilities just two weeks before the opening of the Games. The Greeks clearly left themselves no time to build in green energy and other facilities – even if they had the inclination.

What has been installed now will be difficult to undo, and environmental groups are calling the failure of the authorities a big step back.

In a report released Thursday Greenpeace said that "far from advancing since the last Olympic games in Sydney 2000 the Athens 2004 Organisers have taken a definite step backwards."

It points out that "the siting of some of the Olympic competitions has been the object of fierce controversy in Greece, the most notorious being the siting of the canoe competition at Schinias. This site is home to the most important, and one of the last wetland areas in the region and numerous environmental NGOs (non-governmental organisations) have been fighting, without success, to alter the decision for the last few years."

Nikos Charalambides of Greenpeace Greece said in a statement: "Instead of moving forwards even just a little bit, the Athens 2004 Games has gone back, way back as far as environmental issues are concerned; it is a pretty miserable record. The International Olympics Committee (IOC) has called the environment the third pillar of the Olympics behind sports and culture. Right now it takes a Herculean effort to see this pillar as it seems all but invisible."

In an earlier report the environment group WWF said the Athens 2004 Olympics have "lost any chances for a medal on environmental performance." The WWF evaluated the environmental wins and losses of the Athens Olympics based on the Sydney 2000 Olympics benchmark for "clean and green" games.

On a scale of 0û4, it rated the environmental component of the Athens Olympics at a score of 0.77. The lowest scores were given to areas such as environmental planning and evaluation, protection of fragile natural and cultural areas, waste management and water conservation, and the use of environmentally-friendly construction technologies.

The highest scores went to the fields of public transport and the improvement of existing infrastructure.