Of fire, plastics and fascists: mapping out environmental racism in Greece

January 11, 2024

Conference, Political Ecologies of the Far Right, Uppsala, Sweden

Accepted Abstract

Through moving in land and sea, those seeking refuge in Europe reshaped the European migration regime and altered the sociopolitical reality of local communities. During the summer of 2015, more than 900 thousand people crossed the Aegean sea from Turkish shores to the Greek island of Lesvos. The unprecedented numbers of border crossers tested local infrastructure and services that lacked funding due to the economic crisis. Drawing upon a published scientific article addressing environmental concerns of plastic accumulation due to migration, the local far-right and so called ‘patriotic groups’ shifted the public debate against refugees. The latter were now accused “not only of violating our societal space but our ecological as well”. Eight years later, in August 2023, Greece confronted the most significant environmental disasters in its modern history. The largest ever fire recorded in the EU ravaged the country’s northern border, destroying ~ 22,000 hectares of old-growth forest. While summer fires represent a customary disturbance which shapes and regulates Mediterranean ecosystems, allegations surfaced within right-wing propaganda and local media attributing responsibility for the fires to refugees traversing the nearby Turkish border. Within a couple of days videos circulated with right wing militia patrolling the land to prevent “arson” and abducting refugees in their modified 4x4 trucks. The greek government, reportedly accused of sliding into authoritarianism, adopted the far right discourse, indicating a correlation between the fire and asylum seeker’s presence in the area. In this presentation we map out a genealogy of environmental racism in greece. Drawing from two different examples we delineate how far right rhetoric emerging in Lesvos is now diffused into the discourse of mainstream politics, regularising racist border practices. In doing so, we identify how refugees are rendered as the root cause of environmental harm concluding that academia ought to improve its public output given the consequences of global change on ecosystems and the environment.

Information and data architecture in Ecology: Folder structure, metadata and project management through GitHub

October 26, 2023

Presentation, University of the Aegena, Department of Environment, Mytilene, Greece

During my academic pursuit in ecology, I recognized a need for ecologists to adapt to the evolving landscape of data-driven research. This realization led me to develop and deliver a three-hour talk/lecture titled “Information and Data Architecture in Ecology: Folder Structure, Metadata, and Project Management through GitHub.” In this talk, I address the need to optimize our workflow by utilizing tools and knowledge from information architecture and computer science. The lecture does not focus solely on statistical analyses but on practical aspects, such as project organization, script writing, and the utilization of tools like R-projects and GitHub. The goal is to empower fellow students/researchers to navigate the complexities of the computational dimension in ecology, fostering a more efficient and collaborative approach to ecological research in the era of big data and AI. For more information you can visit the GitHub repository of the talk here.