My name is Efik Santhu, I'm 27 years old and I've been involved with the Green Movement
since 2007 years now, 8 years now actually.
I've been involved with the Young Greens first and then slowly with the Green Party
as well.
And now I'm the Secretary General of the Young Greens of Cyprus and a municipal councillor
with the party in the municipality of Akhlandja.
Well, we try to make climate change seem as a problem for everybody in their daily lives
and giving them opportunity to combat it.
One of the biggest problems we have is the lack of public transport in Cyprus.
We're trying to convince the government to finally make the effort of bringing public
transport and of convincing the people to use it.
Also to convince them not to buy polluting cars, to buy the smaller and more economic
and more eco-friendly cars, if possible electric or hybrid, but if not at least to take into
account the polluting factor of the cars.
The second way that we're trying to convince people is about recycling.
We're trying to show that by using less paper, which means recycling paper, you're saving
trees so you are helping climate change.
We're trying to convince that by using less plastic bags, we are using less petrol, which
is causing smog when they are trying to refine it in the factories.
We're trying to show that by recycling and by having less garbage ending in the landfills,
you have less polluting methane reaching the skies.
The third factor that deals in the island is about water recycling and water preservation.
We're trying to convince people that the water problem has to do with climate change as well.
And by using less water, by helping retain water on the island, that's another way of
helping combat climate change.
The main problem for us is that you have one single ecosystem being divided.
Because it's an island ecosystem and you can definitely see the line and how it has affected,
especially the fauna of the island.
You had the species being able to roam around freely. It's being interrupted.
You have a dead zone in the middle.
It's a very strange thing to the environment itself, having it separated in this not logical way.
But besides that, the biggest problem is that you have an illegal state that basically does
nothing about protecting the environment and which also doesn't have to take into account
what their citizens are saying about the environment.
Right now, when you're living in an early republic, you have the right to speak up.
You have a democracy and you try to change things for the better.
I think that the Greens in the occupied side have a very worst case scenario,
because no matter how logical the things that they have to say and how many people they convince,
they still can't make their illegal government change their position.
It's an illegal state that is run by an army. They do whatever they want the way that they feel it.
As a person, I think that climate change has already affected our lives and we still have to see
the repercussions that it's going to have in the way we grow up, in the way we evolve,
in the way we see the future.
The whole campaign and actually creating the word climate change has helped to combat the problem.
Suddenly, under two words, you have this whole range of things.
You have nuclear energy, you have the use of renewable energy, you have polluting,
you have using cars or not using cars, not using airplanes,
trying to save any sort of energy or recyclable that you can.
It has huge areas that it covers as two words.
This word has travelled all around the world, just as you're travelling around our part of the world right now,
and it's making people understand that we have something in common, all of us.
Cyprus or as an island, us as a person, maybe we're not going to make the biggest change all around the world,
but we can make a dent if we all work together.
So we're doing our part and we're hoping that there's people in other parts of the world that are doing the same.
And we're all connected under these two words, combatting climate change.
