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Greek Financial Crisis and Environment. Can Crisis Be an Opportunity?

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Greek Financial Crisis and Environment. Can Crisis Be an Opportunity? Greek financial crisis and environment. Can crisis be an opportunity? Martha Nanou MSc Thesis May, 2015 Greek financial crisis and environment. Can crisis be an opportunity? MSc Thesis Martha Nanou 860226595020 Supervisor: Dr. Mattijs Smits Environmental Policy (ENP) Second reader: Prof. Dr. Ir. Arthur Mol Environmental Policy (ENP) May, 2015 Dedicated to my family: Vasileios Nanos, Eleni Cheilari & Afroditi Nanou "What is the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?" Henry David Thoreau, Familiar Letters Aknowledgements I am using this opportunity to express my gratitude to everyone who supported me throughout the time of research and writing of this thesis. First and foremost, I would like to thank my parents Vasileios Nanos & Eleni Cheilari and my sister Afroditi Nanou for their infinite love and support. Thanks to you I was able to come and study at the University of Wageningen instead of being in Greece jobless like most of the Greek people at my age. Every passing day I thank God for my fortune of having you. I am grateful for everything you have done for me. Special thanksgivings are addressed to my supervisor, assistant professor Mattijs Smits. Words cannot express how grateful I am. Dear Mattijs, first of all thank you for accepting being my supervisor. It might have taken some time for me to find a proper thesis supervisor, but honestly I could not have imagined having a better one. Thank you for your willingness to give me pieces of advice and insightful comments and for our fruitful meetings. You always give me "food" for thought and motivate me to try harder and become better. I also appreciated your faith and support when I decided to combine my thesis with my internship. Working with you has been a joyful challenge. Thank you! I would also like to thank my internship supervisor, Ivar Smits for the space and time he gave me to work on my thesis. Dear Ivar, thank you for offering me this internship opportunity and leading me working on diverse exciting projects. It has been great working with you. In addition, I would like to express my appreciation and thanks to all interviewees who were more than willing to help me with my research during gathering my empirical data in Greece. Special thanks for your kindness, comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank the second reader, professor Arthur Mol, for spending the time to review this thesis. Last but not least, I want to thank all my friends living in the Netherlands, Greece, but also spread throughout the world. In your way you contributed to the completion of that project. Thank you. Martha Nanou Wageningen, May 2015 Abstract Although the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) is mostly known about its long-term economic consequences worldwide, little is known about its impact on environment. Thus, apart from the social and financial problems that GFC caused in Greece, environment was also affected in both negative and positive ways. This thesis focuses on the major environmental problem of air pollution in Greece and the ways it has been affected by global financial crisis, and attempts to address the effects that the ongoing financial crisis (started in 2008) has on Greek environment, by using Greek environmental policies as its means to analyze the problem. This is achieved through general insights into the scientific debate of environment vs. development at a first level, the relation between environment and financial crises in general at a second level, and the Greek financial crisis and environment at a final level. The methodology that this thesis follows is based on a literature review mainly focused on the concepts of ecological modernization, sustainable development and green growth, and empirical data derived from a newspaper analysis and interviews with "key" stakeholders on environmental issues. Although in the beginning of this research, the context was expected to be focused on the environmental crisis caused by a severe financial crisis, by progressing with the empirical data, it turned out that the examined problem was much more complex and should be treated less as an environmental/financial one and more as a social one. What was mainly concluded from this thesis is that Greece has sufficient environmental policy and more than enough environmental legislations and regulations. However, the lack of a proper control mechanism is weakening their successful implementation and effectiveness. Overall, it appears that the future of Greek environment, under the current crisis, is tied with the structural changes that take place in the economy and affect the function of the entire Greek society. Maybe this crisis opens a "window of opportunity" for Greece to engage in deep fiscal structural reforms that will improve the structure of the Greek society. Key words: Global Financial Crisis, Greece, environment, development, air pollution, environmental policy, Sustainable Development, Ecological Modernization Table of Contents Chapter 1 .............................................................................................................................................. 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and its impacts on the environment ................................................. 1 1.2 Problem Description ......................................................................................................................... 3 1.3 Aims and Objectives of Research ..................................................................................................... 4 1.4 Research Questions ........................................................................................................................... 5 1.5 Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 5 1.6 Thesis structure ................................................................................................................................. 6 Chapter 2 .............................................................................................................................................. 9 Theoretical Framework ......................................................................................................................... 9 2.1 Why sustainable development and ecological modernization? ........................................................ 9 2.2 Sustainable Development ................................................................................................................ 10 2.2.1 Defining Sustainable Development ..................................................................................... 10 2.2.2 Critical perspectives of sustainable development ................................................................ 11 2.2.3 Linking sustainable development to financial crises and GFC ............................................ 13 2.3 Ecological modernization (EM) ...................................................................................................... 15 2.3.1 Defining ecological modernization ...................................................................................... 15 2.3.2 Critical perspectives of ecological modernization (EM)...................................................... 16 2.3.3 Linking ecological modernization to financial crises and GFC ........................................... 16 2.4 Sustainable development and ecological modernization - similarities and differences .................. 17 2.5 Towards analysis of GFC and environmental policy in Greece ..................................................... 18 2.6 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 18 Chapter 3 ............................................................................................................................................ 21 Newspaper analysis for an in-depth evaluation of the major Greek environmental issues ........... 21 3.1 Methodology ................................................................................................................................... 21 3.2 Statistical analysis ........................................................................................................................... 22 3.3 Environmental issues related to financial crisis .............................................................................. 25 3.4 Environmental policies and criticism related to financial crisis ..................................................... 26 3.5 Theoretical Reflection - Insight ...................................................................................................... 27 3.6 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 29 Chapter 4 ............................................................................................................................................ 32 Evaluation of Greek air quality based on interviews' findings ........................................................ 32 4.1 Methodology ................................................................................................................................... 32 4.2 Environmental issues related to financial crisis
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