In the morning, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis attended the conference on “Promoting Innovation in Dealing with Natural Disasters – Exchange of Good Practices: An Act of Culture”, organized by JTI Hellas in collaboration with the Embassy of Japan in Greece, within the framework of “2024: Year of Culture and Tourism of Japan – Greece”.

In the context of the conference, the non-profit organization “The JTI Foundation” announced a donation for the fire protection of the surrounding grove of Xanthi and the equipment of the Fire Service in the city.

Here is the Prime Minister’s statement (unofficial translation from English):

“Mr. President, Mr. Ambassador, dear President, Your Excellency, Mr. Mayors, ladies and gentlemen, it is a real pleasure to address you today, the year we celebrate 125 years of diplomatic relations between Greece and Japan.

I believe we can say that this year’s anniversary finds our bilateral relations at their best, in the wake of the adoption of the Joint Declaration on Strategic Cooperation in February 2023 during my visit to Japan. As you know, in 2024 we are also celebrating the year of culture and tourism and we are exploring how we can further promote our cooperation in these two particularly important areas of our relationship.

I would like to congratulate you for organizing today’s conference on the promotion of innovation in the response to natural disasters, because it gives me the opportunity to address an area that I consider absolutely critical for the bilateral cooperation between Greece and Japan.

We all know that climate change is the harsh reality. We have experienced intense phenomena. Last summer was a very difficult summer for Greece, both in terms of the number of forest fires and their intensity. We’ve faced floods and it’s critical that we work together and leverage the best that technology has to offer in order to save lives, protect livelihoods and make our communities, as you pointed out, Mr. President, more resilient. .

Our two countries know what a natural disaster means. Of course, as you pointed out, there is one natural disaster that can have the most devastating consequences of all. I am referring to earthquakes, where Japan’s know-how is so important that it almost pushes us to establish a better level of cooperation between Greece and Japan, in order to adopt these best practices and see how we can use the technology, hopefully in the future, for this which could be the “Holy Grail” in disaster prevention: early warning when it comes to earthquakes.

I attach particular importance to this event and to the meetings that will take place after the signing of the Memorandum of Cooperation. Our best scientists are involved, and I hope that we will establish a strong partnership between the Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection and the Japanese Government, which will allow us to become even better in this critical area.

I must point out that the Greek Government is going to invest in the coming years more than 2 billion euros, mainly European funds, to strengthen civil protection infrastructure. I think this is a very important investment, because when we talk about climate change, we focus a lot on mitigation, but not enough on adapting to it.

We need to protect our communities, make them more resilient and of course use technology as best we can in order to deal with increasingly frequent phenomena. I am referring to natural disasters, be it floods, fires or earthquakes.

I would like to thank you very much, Mr. President, for the donation you will make to the Municipality of Xanthi and the Fire Service. This is a valuable gift, especially after last year’s devastating fires, which hit the region of North-East Greece with particular severity, where we lost part of one of our most important forests, the forest of Dadia.

I would like to give special emphasis to this early detection and alarm system that we will install in the peri-urban forest of Xanthi. We place special emphasis on the protection of our peri-urban forests and I believe that this investment will make a decisive contribution to their preservation. In the afternoon I will travel to the area and will be happy to announce the good news.

So thank you very much again for your contribution. And let me emphasize once again that by working together and learning from each other, we can strengthen our resilience against natural disasters.

Looking ahead to this fraught future, our two countries, representing ancient civilizations and ancient wisdom, share the will to continue the valuable contribution and join forces in this collective endeavour. Thank you very much”.