Paper short abstract:

For the past two decades, the future of the Akamas peninsula on the Western coast of Cyprus has been the focus of conflicts between local landowners, state government, powerful investors, environmentalists, and European agencies. The case study explores the competing sets of moralities which inform the actions and stances of the actors involved.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, angry villagers from an area in the Western part of Cyprus have repeatedly made headlines in the Greek-Cypriot press when they mounted demonstrations and even threatened to go on hunger strikes. They protest against the government applying to the European Commission to establish a Natura 2000 site on the Akamas peninsula. This wilderness area on the Western coast of Cyprus is largely untouched by the tourism and real estate development boom that has been engulfing other parts of the island. For Akamas, a moratorium on building activity has been in force since the 1980s. Villagers, however, had been hoping that this restriction would be lifted and they, like landowners from neighboring communities, would also be able to profit economically from tourism and land sales.

What superficially may appear as a conflict between local landowners and state authorities also engages European agencies, transnational environmentalist organisations, and powerful investors of the real estate economy who are planning marinas, golf resorts and other projects. The Akamas case is a good example to elucidate the way in which competing sets of moralities inform the actions and stances of the social actors involved, and how their conflicting representations of the environment enlist local and translocal knowledge. The case study offers an opportunity to explore what European ethnology can contribute to an understanding of such conflicts, and also to engage with recent discussions within anthropology on how to address environmentalism as a cultural meaning system and as a cosmology of modern Western societies.