Environmental Education Center

The founding of a Center for Environmental Studies in the Gouves Township is one of the most viable and pioneering proposals for upgrading the area of the old American base.

The township, after a unanimous decision, has filed a proposal at the Education Ministry, just when the ministry had announced the founding of new centers for environmental studies.

Indicatively, according to the decision, following are the reported elements for activities that are developed in the centres.

1) They plan and materialize programs of environmental education for primary and secondary schools. 2) They organize training and informative meetings for teachers and citizens. 3) They collaborate with universities and other educational institutions for exchange of information of material and support of programs. 4) They collaborate with environmental education officials and support the school programs. 5) They collaborate with local institutions and organize events aiming at a viable growth.

The centre is manned with permanent teachers via the Ministry of Education. According to the legislation, the municipality must provide the building infrastructures and the equipment that is required, as well as undertake the maintenance costs, in the event that its proposal is approved.

More analytically, according to a statement by Ioannis Zithianakis, whose office handles this matter for the township, the ecological fields of the region that are offered for the materialization of Environmental Education programs are the protected regions of the Gouves Demos:

A) Opposite the old American base at a distance of 14 km from the proposed center, there is Dia Island that has been included in the Natura 2000 Network. B) Three kilometers east of the base is the Aposelemi biotope, one of Crete’s more important ones, that has been characterized as a shelter of Wild Life.

Program issues in environmental studies that can be developed are:

1 - Coasts - natural environment

2 - Oceans

3 - Pollution - degradation of marine ecosystems

The proposed center would constitute an area to display sensitivities, experiential knowledge and production of educational material for the marine environment of our country among students of primary and secondary education.

The centre would be located in an area of the old American base and in buildings the municipality can allocate after the concession by the Public Real Estate Agency.

The centre is some distance from a sandy beach with rocky formations accessible from the coast. Thus, the development of educational programs with research and observation in the field is feasible.

In roughly the same distance from the proposed centre, there are the installations of Thalassokosmos and CretAquarium (www.cretaquarium.gr). This cluster is the biggest space of marine research, education and recreation in the Mediterranean and belongs to the Greek Center of Marine Research (www.ncmr.gr) with infrastructures and scientific potential that would support the proposed center in various ways.

The students will have the opportunity to visit the research installations, the laboratories of Thalassokosmos, the Crete Aquarium with its 200 species of Mediterranean marine organisms in 6.000.000 litres of water and the projection and event rooms.

In the Thalassokosmo there is a library with a rich collection of books, scientific magazines and a system of electronic access to the world’s bibliography.

The educational programs that will be developed will be prototypes because in no other Environmental Studies Center in the country are specialized programs developed for the marine environment in the depth, extent, and issue-variety that is proposed here.