Project ‘Flood’ – Cyprus and Greece cooperate to deal with natural disasters

The goal is not just to manage the effects of climate change, but to create the right conditions to prevent them and make society more resilient against them, Interior Minister Nicos Nouris said on Thursday.

He was speaking at the inaugural event to introduce ‘Project Flood,’ a common strategy in response to natural disasters caused by floods and other causes as a result of climate change.

The project started in July 2021 and will be completed in June 2023.

It is co-funded as part of the Interreg framework – the Greece- Cyprus Cooperation Programme, in which the Civil Defence of Cyprus and the Decentralized Administration of Crete will also participate.

Carrying out the specific project “will be an important step in continuing our cooperation, updating our goals and outlooks and improving our response to various future challenges in the area of civil defence,” Nouris said.

The main objective of this project is ‘to improve the efficiency and strengthen joint interventions in order to deal with natural, technological and humanitarian disasters, with a focus on floods’. The project will have an emphasis on the supply of vehicles, and equipment such as pumps, to help prevent major damage in the event of a flood, among other resources.

The presentation was conducted by the project management team from the Fire Service, Christoforos Stylianou and Nikos Mardas.

“It is obvious that our goal is not just the after-the-fact management of issues created by climate change,” Nouris said. “Our goal is prevention, and to create the right conditions that will successfully pre-empt danger and create a more society more resilient to the passage of time”.

Project Flood, he concluded, has an important role in this, as “it is expected to contribute significantly in developing a common methodology centred around protecting the environment, which is under threat by existing and future dangers”.

The total budget will amount to around €910,000, of which about €773,000 comes from the EU budget and the rest from the national budgets of Greece and Cyprus respectively.

The two countries have a long-standing and institutionalised relationship, strengthened within the framework of the European Civil Protection Mechanism.