Athens' Fatal Delay in Preparing for Heatwaves

This new green space is the first "micro-forest" in Athens, created by its mayor, Haris Doukas, who wants to plant 5.000 bushes and trees per year.

In this concrete Mediterranean city, green spaces are sorely lacking, while the mercury regularly exceeds 40°C for several days in the middle of summer.

Greening cities is a credible response to the so-called "urban heat island" effect, both in Greece and in the countless cities that already suffer from it and will suffer more with future global warming, experts insist. But the response must be massive, and Athens provides a spectacular counterexample.

The small trees in Alepotrypa Park in Kypseli will take about a decade to grow.

"Too little, too late," laments Katerina Christoforaki, architect and urban planner at the Technical University of Athens, in an interview with AFP.

The last attempt to redevelop Athens was more than 20 years ago, before the 2004 Olympic Games.

But at the time, the construction of stadiums and transport infrastructure was prioritized to the detriment of green spaces.

Missed opportunity

"We have not focused on reducing car traffic or modernizing buildings," insists Katerina Christoforaki.

Most of Athens' buildings and streets were built with materials more than 40 years old, which absorb heat in the summer. And in the winter, insulation is poor, she explains.

Deputy Mayor for Climate, Nikos Chrysogelos, a former Green MEP, agrees that Athens "missed an opportunity" to develop a heat-control system during construction for the 2004 Olympics.

"From 2000 onwards, we could have done much more because we knew the scale of the problem," he insists.

With nearly four million inhabitants, the greater Athens region has developed in a disorderly manner while losing 60% of its surrounding forests due to repeated fires in recent summers, he recalls.

The construction of high-rise buildings in the seaside suburbs prevents sea air from cooling the city.

Boiling Cauldron

Athens city centre is the second most densely populated area in Europe after Paris, according to Eurostat.

The capital has just 0,96 square meters of green space per capita, according to the OECD, which is far from the World Health Organization's recommendation of at least nine square meters per capita.

For Ivvona Kujda, a 54-year-old Athenian, the heat waves of recent years are "alarming."

"Athens is a basin surrounded by three mountains; we are in a boiling cauldron," explains this Polish woman who has lived in Greece for three decades.

In 2021, Athens recorded the worst heatwave in 30 years with temperatures reaching 45°C.

The last two summers have seen prolonged heatwaves. Greece suffered the highest heat-related mortality rate in Europe in 2023, according to a study published in Nature Medicine.

The city needs a more drastic solution than "pocket parks," says Achilleas Plitharas, a former head of the Greek branch of WWF.

"It's not that Athens missed the boat. We never even built the tracks for a train," he says.

25.000 trees by 2028

"A large-scale intervention is necessary," he assures, which could go as far as the demolition "of entire blocks (of housing) to create green corridors."

But this requires political will and difficult choices, as well as "cooperation, which we lack," he adds.

Mayor of Athens since January 2024, Haris Doukas has pledged to plant 25.000 trees by 2028 in an attempt to reduce the perceived temperature by three to five degrees in summer.

New sensors will provide real-time, neighborhood-by-neighborhood temperature data on the hottest days to plan an emergency response if necessary.

Meanwhile, every summer, Athenians do what they can to protect themselves from the crushing heat.

Ivvona Kujda only works in the morning and late afternoon. During the hottest hours, she retreats to her air-conditioned home.

"We don't have enough greenery, nor enough oxygen," she laments. "I think it's going to get worse because the climate is changing."

The publication of this report coincides with the Covering Climate Now initiative's "89 Percent Project," which aims to highlight that a large majority of people around the world want more climate action.