Hunger for Concrete Destroys Mountains in Cyprus

A front-end loader moves material inside the open pit at Molycorp's Mountain Pass Rare Earth facility in Mountain Pass, California, on June 29, 2015. (Reuters)
A front-end loader moves material inside the open pit at Molycorp's Mountain Pass Rare Earth facility in Mountain Pass, California, on June 29, 2015. (Reuters)
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Hunger for Concrete Destroys Mountains in Cyprus

A front-end loader moves material inside the open pit at Molycorp's Mountain Pass Rare Earth facility in Mountain Pass, California, on June 29, 2015. (Reuters)
A front-end loader moves material inside the open pit at Molycorp's Mountain Pass Rare Earth facility in Mountain Pass, California, on June 29, 2015. (Reuters)

From Cyprus to New Zealand, Lebanon and beyond, environmentalists worry about the proliferation of quarries in a world ever greedier for concrete. Concrete consumption has tripled over the past 20 year.

Over 40 billion tons a year of sand and gravel are extracted around the world from mountains, rivers, coastlines and marine environments, the majority for construction. With the global population expected to grow by two billion by 2050, demand can only go up, according to the UN environment agency. The extraction process often comes with deforestation, air pollution and disruption of traditional human activities.

This is the case in Cyprus, near the hut where Jamal makes traditional "hellim" cheese, trucks come to collect rock, kicking up clouds of dust and frightening the animals.

On the quarried area of the mountain slope, vegetation has disappeared. A policeman asks the goat herder to stay back as an explosion triggers a huge cloud of smoke and part of the rock face collapses. On another mountain, Jamal was injured and lost animals to quarrying work.

Rocks "rained down on us," he recalled.

While he understands the "need for rock to build", he hopes the company running the site will help him find quieter pastures in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus established in 1974, and on which live 355,000 people. This region walks the line between development and conservation.

Cenk Sarper, head of the Stone Quarries Union, said: "Today, the island is fed by tourism so we need hotels, guest houses, roads and airports. We don't have any other choice than to exploit the quarries."

He said the quarries operate in areas far from residential zones and respect all the adopted environmental standards. More than 12,000 tons of rock is extracted every day, or around 33 kilograms per capita. The world average is 18 kilograms, according to the UN.

Asking to remain anonymous, a contractor said that key actors "did not do everything possible to limit visual pollution." Some accuse companies from Turkey of being less vigilant than Turkish Cypriot ones.

The secretary general of the biologists' association in northern Cyprus, Hasan Sarpten, regrets that a large quarry was authorized far from a reserved area, in the west.

"They are not applying the best methods" environmentally, he said, criticizing the lack of regulation by Turkish Cypriot authorities.

These authorities declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

Environmentalists are equally worried in the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus.

Environment expert Klitos Papastylianou said: "The growing extraction of raw materials for the construction industry is one of the main threats for protected areas."

Green Party MP Charalampos Theopemptou noted that "marinas and coast protection works require huge amounts of rocks."

An audit recommended increasing fines to discourage illegal quarrying. Calls for stricter controls resound around the world. In Lebanon, where illegal quarries have cleared entire mountains and hundreds of thousands of trees, activists are pushing back, despite death threats.



Europe Had Most Widespread Floods for More Than a Decade in 2024, Scientists Say 

A person cycles along a flooded road after the overtopping of the River Thames on a spring tide, in west London, Britain, March 31, 2025. (Reuters)
A person cycles along a flooded road after the overtopping of the River Thames on a spring tide, in west London, Britain, March 31, 2025. (Reuters)
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Europe Had Most Widespread Floods for More Than a Decade in 2024, Scientists Say 

A person cycles along a flooded road after the overtopping of the River Thames on a spring tide, in west London, Britain, March 31, 2025. (Reuters)
A person cycles along a flooded road after the overtopping of the River Thames on a spring tide, in west London, Britain, March 31, 2025. (Reuters)

Europe faced its most widespread flooding last year since 2013, with 30% of the continent's river network hit by significant floods, scientists said on Tuesday, as fossil fuel-driven climate change continued to prompt torrential rain and other extreme weather.

Flooding killed at least 335 people in Europe in 2024 and affected more than 410,000, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service and the World Meteorological Organization said in a joint report on Europe's climate.

Western Europe was hit hardest, with 2024 ranking among the region's ten wettest years in records going back to 1950. Storms and flooding are Europe's costliest weather extremes, last year causing damage exceeding 18 billion euros.

Globally, 2024 was the world's warmest year since records began, as well as the warmest for Europe - the planet's fastest-warming continent. The planet is now around 1.3 degrees Celsius warmer than in pre-industrial times, mainly due to human-caused climate change.

"Every additional fraction of a degree of temperature rise matters because it accentuates the risks to our lives, to economies and to the planet," said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.

The report noted bright spots, including that renewable energy sources produced a record-high 45% of Europe's energy in 2024, while most European cities have plans in place to better adapt to climate change.

But weather extremes were recorded across the continent. Southeastern Europe had its longest heat wave on record, totaling 13 days, while Scandinavia's glaciers shrank at the highest rates on record, and heat stress increased across the continent.

Much of Eastern Europe was hit by lack of rain and drought, while floods ravaged western Europe.

Nearly a third of Europe's overall river network exceeded a "high" flood threshold, while 12% breached "severe" flood levels in 2024.

Devastating floods in Valencia in late October accounted for most of the lives lost and economic damage caused in Europe by floods, with 232 people killed in the disaster. Storm Boris in September dumped the heaviest rain ever recorded in Central Europe onto countries, including Austria, Czechia, Germany and Slovakia.

Scientists have confirmed climate change has made such downpours more likely, because a hotter atmosphere can hold more water, leading to intense rain. Atmospheric water vapor reached a record high in 2024.

Other factors that influence flooding include river management and urban planning that determine whether homes and infrastructure are built in flood-prone areas.