Emergency alert: Save our island's identity from irreversible overbuilding

Paros, after twenty years of uncontrolled growth, is facing various deadlocks: great difficulties in waste management, threats to biodiversity and to the quality of life of the inhabitants, traffic problems, especially in the summer months, intense concern about the adequacy of water and the resilience of the island in the face of the dangers of the climate crisis.

Growing imbalances burden both the social cohesion and productive life of the island. The consequences are already being felt: Overcrowding in the summer alternating with desolation in the winter, a burden on the daily life of the inhabitants, but also the predominance of large (usually 'foreign') interests and their choices over small, family businesses and the needs of Parian society. Along with the Parian land, the Parisians' right to have a say in their own land is ultimately 'sold'.
Unrestrained residential development, particularly in off-plan areas, threatens agricultural land and makes it increasingly difficult to support the primary production necessary for the resilience, balance and preservation of the identity of our island, of which it is an integral part. It also permanently and profoundly alters the Parian landscape, depriving our island of precisely this natural dowry which has been preserved for millennia and has acted as a lever for tourism development.

This kind of "development" on our island must stop. And it must stop immediately because, at the current rate, in no more than a short time, the primaeval Parian landscape will have been altered to such an extent that any hope for rational and sustainable continuation will have been lost.

Paros can still choose another path for its future. It can be directed to another kind of development, based on soft tourism, i.e. small-scale tourism that ensures that the profitability from it is directed to the local communities and not to those who come to the island only to earn and leave, without regard to the needs of the local community. But if we are to have any hope of moving in this direction, the first and crucial step is to curb the building activity that is causing permanent and irreversible alteration of our place and condemning the island to a destructive one-way street.

The General Urban Plan of Paros, established in 2012 and including important protective provisions for the island, was unfortunately never implemented in all its aspects. Things have developed extremely badly over the last decade, pushing the island to the edge of the cliff. The forthcoming Local Planning Scheme will not be in place for several more years.

But in the meantime, building permits are being issued every day, while the number of houses on the island has already more than doubled in the last thirty years and if we include the volume of new buildings, the numbers are staggering: In 2019, 33,000 sqm were built on Paros, in 2023 66,000 sqm were built, and the rate of issuing building permits is constantly increasing. When, in three or four years, we have the new Local Urban Plan, things for Paros will already be decided. We believe that this situation must be stopped because it is causing irreversible damage to our island, depriving Paros forever of the special and sensitive characteristics of its island physiognomy, and it must be stopped immediately.
We ask the Municipal Council of Paros to take action as soon as possible for the drastic restriction of off-plan building, by taking measures to stop it.
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Signatures (in alphabetical order)

• Association of Naoussians of Paros   
• Citizens' Movement of Paros
• Cultural Association Atlantis from Aspro Chorio
• Friends of Paros and Antiparos
• Recreational-Cultural Association of Aggeria
• Progressive Association of Lefkians of Paros 
• Yria Cultural Association of Lefkes