Fall 1996

As the plane approaches Zakynthos airport, those lucky enough to have window seats are treated to a breathtaking view of Laganas Bay. From the plane, the sea and beach look calm and deserted; the British package tourists who form the mainstay of the island’s tourism have not yet aroused themselves from a night of supporting the beer industry. As the bay races below us, it’s hard to believe the rumors of conflict and ill will that have made their way to Athens over the years.

Much of the activity in Laganas Bay is commonplace for a package tourist resort: row after row of tourist shops sell mass-produced trinkets, restaurants and bars promise food and drink, flashy neon signs of very shape and hue flash. the stench of sewage completes the picture of a slightly seedy, too hastily developed tourist "attraction."

At first, the brown splotches which can be seen from the beach could be mistaken for the undesirable outputs of the hotels that exist by the sea. But then, suddenly, one of these "splotches" lifts its head, and the realization dawns that the brown splotches have been in the bay longer than the hotels. Seeing a Caretta-Caretta sea turtle breathe as it basks on the surface of the water is enough to send anyone’s pulse racing - Laganas appears much more unusual than first impressions suggest.

During the day in Zakynthos, locals, the government, and environmental organizations cater to the bicker over tourists and turtles, as the subjects of their attention soak up the sun on the beach and the surface of the bay respectively. By night, drunken tourists and turtles creating and emerging from nests join the daytime regulars. It used to be much worse, say volunteers at the Sea Turtle Protection Society (STPS). It used to be better, claim some locals. All are referring to the days

when a speedboat ban wasn’t in place, when tourists didn’t visit nesting beaches at night, and when open, sometimes violent, conflict between local business people and belligerent environmentalists seldom occurred. Almost everyone I talked to about the issue claimed that relations were better this year than they had ever been. Almost all expressed hope for the future, especially about the planned Marine National Park. But everyone had memories of the past, and the shadows of these memories extend to the future.

Old Wounds, Current Mistrusts

Sea turtles have existed for more than 100 million years. The large reptiles spend their lives in the sea; females return to nest every three to four years after reaching maturity when they are around 30 years old. When nesting, they lay up to 120 eggs in nesting cambers 50 centimeters deep. Unfortunately for the turtles’ chances of evolutionary continuity, deck chairs, bright lights, and loud noises frighten them so much that they return to the sea without laying their eggs. Though sea turtles used to nest around the entire Mediterranean, Caretta-Caretta now occupy only a few nesting grounds. One of these is the bay of Laganas on Zakynthos.

Until around 15 years ago, Zakynthos was a relatively quiet, poor island, boasting lovely beaches, a rich cosmopolitan history, and relatively little mass tourism. But over the past few years, hundreds of thousands of tourists have been arriving each year, leading to an enormous expansion in business activity. Locals who for years had farmed peacefully branched out into the tourist industry. Some landowners near the beach made fortunes, With the increase in northern European tourism, though, came an influx of Athenian and northern European environmentalists and a Socialist government eager to protect the environment yet unconcerned about troubling large landowners and business people. Land use restrictions, bitter campaigns against water sports, and regulations concerning noise and light pollution suddenly came into effect, with what many locals considered to be insufficient consolation and consensus. The confrontations between the mostly imported environmentalists and some locals were incredible, and the resulting psychological wounds still fester even though physical ones have healed.

STPS volunteers whom I worked with pressed upon me the necessity of being polite to locals. "It just makes them more angry if you are pushy," was a typical comment made by Helen Shore, a British volunteer on her third summer assignment. She and other volunteers appear to know what happens when people get angry. Tales of past confrontations are an important part of environmental lore. Shore recounts tales of volunteers being hit over the head with planks, beaten up, and thrown into the sea. Lily Venizelos, head of the Mediterranean Association to Save the Sea Turtles (MEDASSET) tells of receiving a bodyguard from ministers concerned for her safety, and of landowners sending gangs to beat up STPS volunteers, only to find that one of the attacked was the son of an EU Commissioner. When I tell of meeting a hotel owner on the beach who claimed to be one of the STPS’s greatest friends, I am curtly informed that a few years earlier, this same man arrived on the beach with a gang of armed men and threw them off the beach. Despite the more amicable climate at the present, environmentalists appear to be socially separate from the local community.

Environmentalists are not the only ones on whom the past exerts a powerful influence. Local landowners and business people harbor their own special grudges. Though they, too, admit that the situation is "much better" this year, they have memories of an invasion of environmentalists, followed by what they see as massive, unnecessary, and damaging government regulation. Some big hotel owners target arrogant socialists and their disastrous policies, before swinging around and sympathizing with the plight of small landowners and the lack of compensation for building bans. Others, such as the owner of the Zante Beach Hotel, who provides the STPS with a campsite and basic services such as electricity, speak pacifically of people needing time to "get used to" environmentalists who suddenly arrived in Zakynthos. The latter group is dominated by "foreigners" (which includes Greeks not from Zakynthos), who until recently, did not have much to do with locals. Locals express a variety of opinions, including desires to work more closely with the STPS to apprehension about the outbreak of war if environmental measures affect tourism to concern that mysterious "foreign interests" lurk behind the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and its purchase of the land around the most important nesting beach, Sekania. Almost everyone agrees that landowners affected by government restrictions must receive compensation. similarly, almost all locals feel that the early environmentalists were arrogant and that there are still too many foreigners (and too few Zakynthians) in environmental organizations.

The Future of Ecotourism

Most of the environmentalists’ local information campaigns and most of the locals’ commercial ventures target package tourists, the vast majority of whom are Britons. The tourists are generally supportive of environmental measures, briefed by their tour operators about basic principles of "good citizenship." The tour operators’ local representatives generally express support for environmental measures. Almost everyone agrees that turtles are an added drawing card for the resort, and some companies are even expressing an interest in dedicated ecotourism. But for the moment, at least, Zakynthos draws tourists primarily for its sea, sand, and sun.

Local officials an environmentalists have grand plans for encouraging ecotourism with the creation of a Marine National Park. But hoteliers and other people engaged in commerce are more guarded.

Some claim that ecotourism is not tenable, while others point out that massive upgrades must be made to facilities for it to happen - and suggest large government subsidies to help make this upgrade possible. Many locals believe that the drop in tourism the island has been experiencing recently stems from environmentalists making it more expensive to do business, by banning night flights at the airport, for instance. But according to Thomsons, a large British tour company which partly sponsors STPS’s work, tourist surveys and figures for all of Greece suggest that this is not so. Tourism is down throughout the country. Thomsons says that the extra expense for flights is not an important factor in the drop in bookings, and tourists surveyed on Zakynthos cited bad infrastructure and overcrowding, not radical environmentalists, as the reason that they would not return. But these facts are not widely publicized on the island.

Looking at the situation in Zakynthos, one feels that the most important differences dividing environmentalists and locals originate in the past. Locals blame environmentalists for the government regulation that has deprived seaside land of value. Environmentalists remember locals’ hostile reactions. The common Greek suspicion of the "other" remains when environmental organizations buy land, bypassing problems with government regulation. Perhaps the most hopeful signs are the fact that the Zakynthians most positive about the environmental organizations are the younger generation. They seem the most comfortable with the rules protecting the turtles and the most willing to work with the environmentalists. This increased tolerance comes as environmental organizations have been expanding efforts at local outreach and reaching at least temporary compromises over the scope of information campaigns.

The Bay of Laganas may not actually ever be as calm as it looks to outsiders. Zakynthians are still not zealous environmentalists. But the island is in transition: plans for ecotourism progress, the environmental organizations continue their efforts at local outreach, and a younger generation grows up more comfortable with environmental activism. The planned Marine National Park is the most important factor drawing the two sides together. If all goes well, locals and environmentalists, tourists and turtles will be able to bask in the sun together, in and around the calm waters of Laganas Bay.

Mr. Zervos, PC'99, is a history major at Yale College.