THE US-based Protect the Earth and Atmosphere Charitable Endowment (Peace) group are threatening to sue local greens for labelling them a “bogus” environmental group.
Peace vice-chairman and Cyprus representative, Georgios Christodoulou, said in a statement earlier this week he had instructed his lawyers to take action against the “false, malicious and libelous” actions of local environmentalists.
Peace hit the headlines last year when they presented a study recommending the Akamas area be “protected” through the creation of a vast tourism complex at the remote tip of the peninsula, with surfaced roads leading to it.
The Peace study flew in the face of a government-commissioned World Bank report recommending the preservation of the Akamas as a wilderness area, with tourism development restricted to within existing village boundaries. The Peace proposal was welcomed by Akamas residents, but slammed by environmental groups like Friends of the Earth and Friends of the Akamas, who claimed the Salt Lake City-based group were a “front” for developers.
“Environmentalists charge that Peace came here at the invitation of developers, as if developers were a curse,” Christodoulou said. “Yes, I am a developer and I’m proud of it… and I invited Peace to Cyprus, not for my benefit – because I have not a jot of land in the Akamas – but for the salvation and development of the beautiful Akamas communities,” the Peace representative stated.
He said Peace were a charitable environmental group comprising “distinguished scientists of international renown.” Local greens have claimed Peace scientists are guilty of producing custom-made reports to back-up developers’ positions on specific environmental issues.
“It would appear that certain astounding truths revealed in the Peace report were not liked because they uncovered the groundless dogmatic positions of the World Bank report which serve certain suspect aims,” Christodoulou stated.
The Peace report questioned whether protected sea-turtle species actually nested on Akamas beaches. The Fisheries Department, which has for years been monitoring turtle nesting on the Toxeftra and Lara beaches, has laughed off these
