During the field excursion organized on the occasion of the first project meeting of the PRIMA funded Mara-Mediterra project, we met up with a true champion of Nature-based Solutions on the Island of Lesvos in Greece. Having proved himself as a highly successful business manager in Greece and Romania, Antonios Tirpintiris wished to give something back to the island where he grew up to young adulthood. He was particularly struck by the ongoing desertification on the western shores of Lesvos Island. Antonios and his wife, Fotini, gave the Mara-Mediterranean Consortium a warm welcome at their Faros Estate in Sigri. First on the menu was a walk about on the estate where they had invested in the planting of no less than 44,000 olive trees. To anyone familiar with the acute scarcity of fresh water in this part of the North Aegean Island, this effort would surely have seemed against the odds, if not futile. Their determinedness paid off as this multitude of olives trees together with hundreds of palm trees they planted as windbreakers, effectively changed the micro-climate of the area. Antonios recounted how the annual rainfall doubled from a mere 400 mm when they first embarked on their initiative about a decade ago, to over 800 mm today.

As the walkabout took place in the early afternoon with the temperature hovering around 30 degrees, Antonios had another surprise up this sleeve. He invited us to touch the ground and to everyone’s astonishment, the ground was still feeling moist! He assured us that with olive harvesting just round the corner, the trees were not being irrigated. The real reason had to be ascribed to different types of grass, purposely introduced to maintain the soil moisture level as high as possible.

If the opportunity had presented itself, he would gladly have employed a larger work force, not least to control erosion e.g., by terracing the area. Yet, also for this challenge he had learned how to simply let nature take care: plants were encouraged to grow, particularly plants that grow into hedges and make deep roots. Antonios will clearly not be heard calling anything a weed, except for seaweed … which is collected from the nearby seashore and added to a heap of everything else that gets collected as waste from the estate… as it makes for an excellent organic fertilizer! Their long-term investment in nature has made the Faros Estate an important biodiversity habitat for plants, birds, and animals alike. They are deservedly proud also of the amazing quality of the Extra Virgin Olive Oil produced at their Sigri Olive Mill which is equipped with the very latest technology.

This write-up was penned by Dirk De Ketelaere as part of Mara-Mediterra’s First e-Newsletter which was issued in January 2023 and which can be downloaded in Arabic, English, French, Greek and Turkish.