Environmental Conservation Initiative, Feodosiya Green Party.

This is a very interesting article on an initiative by the Green Party in Feodosiya, a Ukrainian town on the Black Sea Coast. I have a literal translation which I have picked the bones out of, so it may not be entirely accurate in every detail, but the content is sound. My wife, who is from Foedosiya, and is always on the lookout for green news for my blog, saw this article on the internet as she was catching up on local news.

I have condensed the article considerably, and cut out a lot of local content, but the main message of conservation is clear.

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Article From “kafanews.com“. Kafa being the old name for Feodosiya.
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Last Christmas the Green Party in Feodosiya offered townspeople a fir tree for hire service, whereby live fir trees could be purchased and either returned in the new year for a partial refund, or kept and planted in the garden for future use.

As the scheme was so successful last year, and made people realise that the cutting down of fir trees ad lib is not a good idea, the leaders of the Feodosiya Green Party, Dmitry Achkasov and Dmitry ShChepetkov, the instigators of, ‘ A fir tree for rent ‘, have decided to repeat the service this year.

Any profits from this initiative are used for the replanting of any returned trees, and planting new trees in areas where they are needed. There are also plans to plant trees in the grounds of schools and hospitals.

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The Crimean climate is in a delicate balance, it has its own micro climate, if you like. 150 years ago, the Crimea was a very arid dry place, similar to most Middle Eastern regions today. Over the last 150 years though, the climate has changed dramatically. Now, although the summers are still excruciatingly hot, and the winters can be really vicious, where once there was an arid moonscape, there are now forests, streams and grasslands, in fact during the more temperate months, it could be anywhere in Europe.

So it’s understandable that there are concerns, especially now during the upheavals that world climate change could herald, that any upset to the delicate balance of the micro climate of the Crimea could bring about another reversal of the climate, and move it back 150 years.

Lets hope that the Green Party in Feodosiya can bring about an awareness, in that part of the Ukraine, of the necessity to safeguard the environment.

Unfortunately, as everywhere, there are those who just do not care.

I have spent some time in the Crimea, and it is a very beautiful place

The photo’s below show the Crimea of 150 years ago, and the Crimea of now. I apologise for the before photo’s being of the Crimea war era, but they were the only photo’s I could find of that time. Though doubtless there are many sources available, I just couldn’t find them.

As a footnote, I would like to say a big thank you to my very lovely wife Galina for bringing this article to my attention.
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THEN

AND NOW

You can see from the before and after photo’s, the trmrendous importance of environmental conservation, not just in the Crimea, but Globally. The ‘THEN’, might so easily be the ‘NOW’, much sooner than we realise, for all of us.