Lefteris Arapakis comes from a long line of fishers. For five generations his family has plied the bountiful waters off southern Greece, netting the same cod and red mulls that have sustained Greeks for millennia.
But in recent years, overfishing and pollution, especially discarded plastic, have hammered Greece’s fisheries, with catches in the Mediterranean Sea falling as much as 34 per cent in the last 50 years.
Out at sea, Arapakis, 26, noticed many boats around his hometown of Piraeus hauling in nets filled with rubbish, instead of fish. This plastic by-catch was then simply dumped back into the water.
“I got more and more worried about the scarcity of fish and the increase of plastic,” says Arapakis, who trained as an economist. “I was deeply concerned that my father, and now my brothers, could not make a living out of this job, which is what they learned to do and what they love to do.”
National News Agency - UNEP names seven dynamic environmentalists as its 2020 Young Champions of Earth nna-leb.gov.lb - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nna-leb.gov.lb Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Greek Man Named Europe’s “Young Champion of the Earth” by UN
ENALEIA’s Lefteris Arapakis. Credit: UN Environment Programme/YouTube
Lefteris Arapakis, a 26-year old Greek climate activist and entrepreneur, was named “Young Champion of the Earth” for Europe by the United Nations on December 11.
A graduate of the Athens University of Economics and Business, in 2017 Arapakis co-founded ENALEIA, a social startup inspired by Greece’s climate and economic crisis that teaches the unemployed sustainable fishing practices. ENALEIA was the first school for professional fishermen anywhere in the country.
Greek Reporter spoke to Arapakis about his mission to attract more people into the fishing sector by creating conditions for ongoing sustainable fishing in the future during an interview in 2019.
THE STANDARD
NAIROBI
Nzambi Matee, Unep’s Young Champion of the Earth for Africa, holding a paving stone made from recycled plastic at her Industrial Area factory.
When Nzambi Matee told her friends she was planning to take up waste management as a career, they thought she was crazy. She was 27 years old, had a degree in Physics from Jomo Kenyatta University, and her peers thought she could do better than recycling waste.
However, if that was the direction she had taken, her friends felt she should employ people to do the ‘dirty’ work. But Matee chose to ignore those who doubted her passion. She pressed on. And being recognised by the UN Young Champions of the Earth programme was the least of her expectations, especially coming just three years after she started.
UNEP names winners of the 2020 Young Champions of the Earth challenge nationalaccordnewspaper.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nationalaccordnewspaper.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.