What’s the Cost of Tourism in the Water-Starved Mediterranean?

Last year, when I was driving through the Mesara Plain in southern Crete, I found not the green farmland I remembered as a kid but a cascading plain of desiccated land. Some swathes looked like desert, covered only by dehydrated foliage. The island has always been dry, with resourceful farmers literally working the land to life. But I’d never seen it look as dry as this.

Climate change has wilted Greece’s largest island, half of which is at risk of desertification. Greenhouses and profligate irrigation practices have guzzled water, as have giant resorts and seedy cementopolis tourist traps that have marred the north coast. I’ve often railed and screamed that these greedy tourism businesses were killing the island and should be stopped at all costs, but instead of bravos I got hard looks from Cretans.

Tourism pays the bills in Greece and many Mediterranean countries. The reality of water shortages has escalated worries but has not translated into any kind of water conservation policies or ecologically sound development. Resorts continue to sprout up all over the Mediterranean, even in seriously dehydrated areas like Murcia, Spain, where resort owners get farming exemptions on water use by labeling golf grass a “crop.” It’s no surprise that a war over water has broken out.

The big resorts gulp a lion’s share of water for their golf courses and swimming pools and, for a time, may bask in the glory of the tourism rush. But as they strain the land, they also strain and destroy their ventures. Consider the giant resort development of Kemer on the Turkish Mediterranean coast, once a lavish place for vacation excess, now the decaying haunt of package tourists. Meanwhile, nearby Cirali—a sustainable, eco-hip collection of treehouses and cottages on a lovely beach—is attracting more and more travelers who want to bask in Turkey’s natural beauty. It’s a study in myopic versus visionary tourism development.

I wish I could say examples such as Cirali resonate around here. With few exceptions, they don’t. Mediterranean countries are still using dwindling water resources like it’s 1999. Some developers and tourism operators are just plain greedy, but others are merely operating with the paradigm that has served Mediterranean tourism development for so many years. Governments in southern Europe tend to think only in the short-term, and people only panic when the water is almost gone. Not the smartest way to be sustainable.

My eco-diatribe about Mesara and Crete in general may sound sanctimonious to a struggling hotel owner who has few sound business options on an island in ecological crisis. And I understand how frustrated people are with Greece’s two main political parties, who have offered only myopic environmental and tourism development policies in the last 30 years.

But times have changed, and the land can’t take it anymore. Not even beautiful, tough, resilient Crete.

Photo of desertification in Italy by pizzodisevo via Flickr (Creative Commons).

©2024 World Hum, All Rights Reserved