Eco Hvar

ECO HVAR: AIMS AND ACTIVITIES OF THE CHARITY

Environment

Eco Hvar's aims for environmental protection, and related articles.

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Health

Eco Hvar's ideas for encouraging positive health, plus related articles

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Animals

Eco Hvar's aims for protecting animals and improving animal welfare, plus related articles

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Welcome to the Eco-Hvar website

Welcome to the Eco-Hvar website!

Hvar Island on the Dalmatian coast in Croatia is one of the most beautiful places in the world. It has the makings of a paradise on earth. Islanders have long boasted of the clean air and sea, the pristine natural environment and the healthy lifestyle based on a good diet and outdoor living.

Clear sea in Hvar harbour, July 2014. Photo: Vivian Grisogono

Tourism is the island’s main economic activity. Hvar Town established the first professional tourist organization in Europe when the Hvar Health Society (Higijeničko društvo Hvar) was founded way back in 1868 under the leadership of Bishop Juraj Duboković. The Society’s aim was to attract guests to Hvar Town who could benefit from the climate, especially the mild winter, and the clean air. These ‘health tourists’ were well looked after by all accounts, with good food and healthy activities. They provided the foundation for Hvar’s enduring successful tourist industry.

The style of tourism has changed over the years. The basis of Hvar Island’s attractions remains the same. Many people still come to visit or stay here in order to enjoy the clean air, sea and countryside. No-one is disappointed in the natural beauty of the place. There are also other attractions, including the island's rich and colourful history and cultural heritage, not to mention the good food and high quality wines.

However, the island is not perfect. Certain aspects could and should be changed. There is a surprisingly high incidence of smoking- and diet-related illnesses on the island, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and lung problems. The doctors also have to deal with thyroid and hormonal disturbances, especially in young girls, and cancers in all age groups. The indications are that islanders need a better understanding of healthy lifestyle habits, also a clearer knowledge of the downside of using chemical pesticides and fertilizers.

For animal-lovers, the treatment of animals also gives cause for concern. There is no animal rescue facility on the island,  and refuges for dogs and cats are urgently needed so proper care can be provided for homeless animals.

The registered not-for-profit charity Eco Hvar was founded in 2013 to help improve conditions for people, animals and the environment. You can read details of the charity's aims in each category on these links: Environment, Health, Animals. The overall ideal aim is to create a true earthly paradise on the exquisite Island of Hvar.

 

Eco Hvar is pleased to co-operate with like-minded organizations, and is a member of PAN Europe, and LAG Škoji, and a supporter of Zemljane staze - Earth Trek (Facebook page), Održivi otok ('Sustainable Island') (Facebook page), Dignitea (Facebook page) and Pokret otoka ('Island Movement')..

For comprehensive research and strategies for environmental protection, we follow and strongly recommend The Nature-based Solutions Initiative, which operates from the UK University of Oxford Departments of Biology and Geography.

The Eco-Hvar website contains original articles, information, references and links in keeping with the aims of Eco Hvar. All the material on the website is copyright, including the illustrations and photographs, and may not be reproduced or published in any form except with the copyright holders' written permission. However, you are welcome to copy or print out any of the articles for personal use only. For day-by-day topics of interest in keeping with Eco Hvar's aims, you can follow us on Facebook.

 

 

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Eco Environment News feeds

  • Warming UK seas could ‘fundamentally reshape marine ecosystems’ – report

    Four-year study warns destabilised marine food webs could jeopardise food security by 2050

    Warming seas around the UK and the wider north-east Atlantic could destabilise marine food webs, weaken ocean health and jeopardise food security by 2050, according to a four-year study.

    Scientists who projected the impact of climate breakdown on four key groups of marine life crucial to maintaining ocean ecosystems in the region said their results challenged assumptions that in middle latitudes, such as the UK, marine biodiversity was likely to increase across the board.

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  • South West Water’s failure to fix leaks ‘putting customer supplies at risk’

    With parts of region served by company in severe drought still, regulators give it six weeks to come up with action plan

    Repeated failures by South West Water to tackle leaks are putting customers at higher risks of losing water supplies as parts of the region remain in severe drought, regulators have said.

    In a warning to the privatised company that serves 1.8 million people across the south-west of England, the regulators said it had been failing to meet targets to reduce leaks and repair burst pipes for seven years.

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  • ‘No one cares about the little guy’: Sri Lanka’s fishers still reeling from 2021 toxic plastic spill

    A stricken container ship shed tonnes of tiny pellets called nurdles on the west coast. Five years on, locals are counting the cost to marine life and livelihoods

    On the beach in Pamunugama, on Sri Lanka’s west coast, women in uniform work under the scorching sun. They sift through rubbish washed ashore, searching among the usual litter for something much smaller: tiny plastic pellets.

    Five years ago, in May 2021, this same beach was swamped with pellets as smoke rose over the Indian Ocean.

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  • World’s wettest rainstorms are getting wetter, affecting flood and drought risk

    Events that deliver about half of global rainfall are getting shorter but more intense, with wide-ranging implications

    The world’s wettest rainstorms produce about half of the global annual rainfall. Now a study shows that these intense downpours have become shorter in duration and fewer in number, compressing the same amount of rain into quicker and more extreme events, with implications for flood and drought risk.

    Chiyuan Miao and colleagues from Beijing Normal University in China analysed daily measurements between 1980 and 2022 from more than 19,000 rain gauges around the world. They found that an average of about half of the world’s rainfall fell during about nine multi-day storms, delivered over a cumulative time of about 28 days.

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  • Lab-grown meat was supposed to save the world. What happened?

    We were promised a panacea for the climate crisis and a way to save our food system. So why is nobody firing up the chicken vats? I went to find out

    On 5 August 2013, a man and a woman ate a burger. Not just any burger: a world-historic burger, made from cattle cells grown in a laboratory by Mark Post, a professor of vascular physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. The burger had taken two years to produce and cost €250,000 (about £210,000 at the time), money furnished by the Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Now it was being tasted in public for the first time at Riverside Studios in London, at an event attended by 200 members of the press and livestreamed to thousands.

    To make this particular burger, Post had extracted stem cells from the shoulder muscle of a living cow, then cultivated them in plastic containers filled with a nutrient-rich supplement called foetal bovine serum, which is derived from cow foetuses. The cells eventually became 20,000 strands of tissue, which in turn became a single 140g patty. Post believed that beef produced this way had the potential to dramatically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and slow the climate crisis. Raising cattle for consumption requires massive amounts of land and water – and massive amounts of feed grown at a high environmental cost. He projected that global demand for meat would soon outstrip our ability to produce it the old-fashioned way, at which point our food systems would become unsustainable. But that didn’t have to mean a mass recalibration of our consumption habits or a global shift away from red meat. Post and his team had found another way.

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  • Country diary: The autumn glory of a tulip tree | Jennifer Jones

    Liverpool: Their summer flowers provide the name and the fame, but this species is arguably at its best now

    Beech mast crunches underfoot, and the occasional conker catches the sunlight, tiny beacons leading me to Camp Hill, south Liverpool, with its distant views over the Mersey estuary. Goldfinches erupt from desiccated knapweed, and a flock of pink-footed geese fly overhead. For once, the birds are not my goal, but a tree: the tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera).

    Every autumn, the Camp Hill tulip tree flaunts its flamboyant presence: the Lady Gaga of the parkland. Named because its flowers resemble a tulip flower, and its leaves a tulip silhouette, few can resist its tulle lace canopy of butter-gold leaves. The luminescence is enhanced by the sheen of its leaf cuticles, and the fissured trunk adds yet more sensory impact. Yet this year there is a strangeness: instead of the golden monotone you would expect of this moment, there is a messy mix of different shades. Might the summer drought have disrupted the pigment battle between anthocyanins and carotenoids?

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  • Firework noise limit should be drastically cut to protect wild animals, UK government told

    Ministers urged to go further than proposed cut to 110 decibels to ease acute stress on birds and other animals

    Campaigners are calling on the UK government to protect the welfare of wild animals by cutting the maximum noise level of fireworks sold to the public from 120 to 90 decibels.

    The Center for Wild Animal Welfare (CWAW) has said lowering the limit to 90dB – which is about one-eighth of the loudness of 120dB – would help to protect millions of wild animals from acute stress by reducing the area over which a firework disturbs surrounding wildlife.

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  • ‘It’s kind of a melting pot’: how one US city transformed a highway into a leafy oasis

    The BLVD is home to 250 enterprises, from banks, tattoo shops and restaurants to museums and a performing arts centre

    Passing through the Mojave desert on State Route 14, going by landscapes Hollywood uses to represent alien planets, a driver might not expect to find a walkable, tree-lined boulevard.

    But there are nine beautiful, leafy blocks on West Lancaster Boulevard, a piece of what used to be Highway 14. They were redeveloped as part of a mixed-use urban streetscape in the city of Lancaster, California in 2010.

    The BLVD, as it’s been rebranded, is home to 250 public and private enterprises, from banks, tattoo shops and restaurants to museums, a performing arts centre and a public library. City Hall is just a block south.

    The city invested $11.5m (£8.5m) to transform a busy thoroughfare into an inviting public space. The three lanes in the centre of the former five-lane road were replaced by a series of tree-lined ramblas – Spanish for “avenue” and “watercourse,” because dry stream beds served as streets in early cities.

    The redesign was planned and funded by the city of redevelopment agency. Within four years of completion, it had generated more than $270m in economic output, attracted $130m in investment, created hundreds of jobs and prompted the building or renovation of hundreds of housing units, according to the city.

    The revitalisation has also created more intangible benefits, residents say.. The city centre the feels like a gathering space, they said — somewhere where they can feel like part of a community.

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  • From the archive: The trials of Robert Habeck: is the world’s most powerful green politician doomed to fail? – podcast

    We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors

    This week, from 2023: A year ago, Germany’s vice-chancellor was one of the country’s best-liked public figures. Then came the tabloid-driven backlash. Now he has to win the argument all over again

    By Philip Oltermann. Read by Sam Peter Jackson

    Read the text version here

    Support the Guardian today: theguardian.com/longreadpod

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  • ‘Music is the most powerful way of connecting to what’s happening’: can this album change your mind about the climate crisis?

    With globe-spanning artists – including Charlotte Church doing angry electropop – the Flow project is hoping to make an impact at this month’s Cop31

    Amid tense and long-winded negotiations, and with the future of the planet at stake, emotions can often run high at Cop climate summits. But last year, when the annual conference arrived in Brazil, one UN official was unexpectedly moved to tears by five women singing about the power of water.

    “She gave me a massive hug after the event and said, ‘We need to bring music into Cop,’” says Nikita Llerena, the project manager for Flow, a music collective that’s hoping to bring art to the centre of the climate movement. What started as a handful of musicians meeting over Zoom last year has grown into a full-length album that unites female artists from around the world, including Charlotte Church, Maxine Peake and Nadine Shah. This month, members of the collective will return for Cop31, in Turkey, where they have been promoted to a slot at Global Cultural Action’s opening event.

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