The fields of seagrass, Posidonia oceanica – the thickets of green fronds found on the sea bed at many points along the Cretan shoreline – pass mostly unnoticed by visiting tourists, and have until recently been ignored by locals or regarded mainly as a nuisance. Accumulating in large banks thrown up by the winter storms, the dried vegetation is usually cleared by municipal bulldozers so as to restore the pristine aspect of the region’s beaches before the start of the tourist season. In recent years, however, it has been established that Posidonia has a number of important ecological functions. The living meadows provide a refuge and breeding ground for marine creatures, while also absorbing significant quantities of carbon dioxide. The dead plants, if left on beaches, help to prevent erosion, which is a major problem along the island’s northern coastline.
The plant being endemic to the Mediterranean Sea, its preservation and restoration has become the subject of an EU-funded multinational project, entitled “Interreg Euro-MED – ARTEMIS: Accelerating the Restoration of Seagrass Meadows in the Mediterranean area through Innovative ecosystem-service based Solutions”. Eastern Crete is the location of a pilot project designed to investigate the best solutions for a European approach to seagrass restoration. A recent workshop held at the Heraklion Chamber of Commerce and Industry brought together the various partner organisations involved in the project to explore ways of establishing what was described as an “institutional framework” for the undertaking. A joint press release from the meeting, reproduced below, reports on the issues raised.
Laying the Foundations for the Restoration of Posidonia: Workshop with Local Stakeholders in Crete – Joint press release
As the country prepares to implement the EU’s Nature Restoration Law, partners in the ARTEMIS project and local bodies in Crete have begun a dialogue for jointly formulating a new institutional framework and investigating alternative funding mechanisms for the restoration of Posidonia. The Green Tank in collaboration with the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) invited local bodies in Crete to a working meeting with the title “Restoration of Posidonia meadows: institutional framework, challenges and prospects”, as part of the Interreg Euro-Med ARTEMIS project.
The meeting took place at the Heraklion Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Tuesday 4th March 2025. Among the participants were representatives of the Region of Crete, the Natural Environment and Climate Change Agency (NECCA), the Decentralised Administration of Crete, the University of Crete and other interested parties, as well as representatives of the partners in the ARTEMIS programme. The area of Atzikiari Bay in the Cretan Municipality of Lasithi is one of the pilot areas for the project where restoration activities are being carried out by the scientific team of NECCA.
The aim of the meeting was to understand the existing institutional framework, to identify the challenges and chart the prospects created following the adoption of the Nature Restoration Law, so that with Crete as a starting point the foundations can be laid for the effective restoration of seagrass meadows throughout the country.
Hailing the initiative on behalf of the Region of Crete, which is a participating partner in the ARTEMIS project, the Deputy Regional Governor for the Environment Nikos Xylouris said: “Since the major environmental value of the Posidonia meadows has finally become more generally known in the past few years, the Interreg Euro-MED ARTEMIS project has become of critical importance and interest. Understanding the great environmental importance of the Posidonia meadows, the Region of Crete has supported the undertaking in question from the beginning. We expect clear directions to emerge from the project as to the types of restoration required, so that we have in our hands a tool for the protection and promotion of those areas.”
Through participatory exercises, the bodies involved have begun to identify the necessary steps which are needed to make up the new institutional framework. “The restoration of nature is a new field of action and that in itself is a challenge. Taking advantage of the experience and the positive response of the participants in the project, we have noted who could be the responsible bodies and what could be the stages of implementation and follow-up of the restoration activities. Thus we are a step closer to formulating proposals for an institutional framework for Posidonia restoration which will be realistic and feasible,” said Dimitra Syrou, Adviser on Nature Policy for Green Tank, which is one of the partners in the project.
“Today we have sufficient knowledge to allow us to make pilot plans for the protection and restoration of nature and consequently to enrich it. With projects such as ARTEMIS we are working in this direction. What is needed now is to implement the policies for increasing protection and relieving pressures, and to create the institutional framework for active restoration,” said Evgenia Apostolaki, Chief Researcher at HCMR’s Institute of Oceanography, which is a partner in the project.
Special emphasis was given to alternative funding mechanisms for promoting such activities, such as Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES), which include amongst other things the sequestration of blue carbon, contributions to biodiversity maintenance, the development of leisure activities and tourism. “Through interaction with local stakeholders we can match the funding schemes to be proposed by the ARTEMIS project for seagrass restoration with the conditions in each region, thereby increasing their output and their effectiveness,” said David Alvarez Garcia, founder and Managing Director of ECOACSA [an environmental consultancy based near Madrid], who are partner in ARTEMIS.
The aim of the Interreg Euro-MED ARTEMIS project is to improve the techniques of restoration of marine seagrass meadows (Posidonia oceanica), to assess the ecosystemic services which these provide, and to create cutting-edge techniques for their incorporation on the one hand into policy formulation and on the other into investment decisions.
The project is being carried out by ten partners, coordinated by Plan Bleu [a UN-funded consultancy based in Marseille]. Participants in Greece are the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) and the environmental think tank The Green Tank. Contributing partners of the project are the Region of Crete and the Natural Environment and Climate Change Agency (NECCA).
References:
Press release: thegreentank.gr
EU Nature Restoration Regulation: environment.ec.europa.eu
Payment for ecosystem services (PES): https://en.wikipedia.org
ARTEMIS: https://artemis.interreg-euro-med.eu/