Environment

Environment

 

ECO HVAR'S AIMS:

To initiate, organize, promote and encourage projects to preserve and improve the natural environment.

HOW?:

- through projects for education in organic methods of farming

- through projects for education in the use of biodegradable substances for household washing and cleaning

- through projects to reduce the use of poisons and chemicals

- through projects for education in waste and rubbish management

- through projects for education in recycling

- through  projects to clean up the environment

- through projects to establish valid international organic certification for products

- through co-operation with organizations having similar aims in Croatia and abroad

What inspired ECO HVAR for the environment

Names in English and Croatian of birds commonly seen on Hvar, together with the scientific names. 

The wildflowers on Hvar are a year-round joy. Even in the depths of winter, there is hardly a week without colours brightening up the countryside, contrasting with the island's rocks and the variegated dark green of the woodlands. 

Good health depends on clean air, clean water and a clean environment. Hvar Island is perfectly placed to offer all those amenities.

GBH is the acronym for Grievous Bodily Harm, a criminal offence in UK law. It also stands for glyphosate-based herbicides...

Wild orchids are a special part of our environment. Are we looking after them?

The Romans knew how to build, and they knew how to choose the best sites for their building. Diocletian's Palace in Split is a prime and well-preserved example. New discoveries in and around the Palace in recent years have brought about a major revision of the history of this magnificent Late Antique building project.

Organic farming: possible? YES! worthwhile? YES! Mihovil Stipišić from Vrboska is proving the point.

When soil is contaminated, what ends up on your plate and in your cup or glass is less than healthy. Chemical pesticides and artificial fertilizers are causing untold damage. The 'conventional model' of agriculture is exhausting the earth and undermining human health. There are much better methods of protecting soil and plants using natural resources.

Rubbish management is a hot topic, not to say hot potato, around the world at the moment, especially in Croatia, where the European Directives which were laid down some years ago are finally due to come into force on November 1st 2018.

 

The results from our survey about land usage on the Starigrad Plain (Hora, Ager). The survey was conducted on behalf of LAG Škoji (Local Action Group), Eco Hvar and the Agency for the Management of the Starigrad Plain. The aim was to gain an overview of land usage, and to gather information as to what the landowners think is needed to improve conditions in this historic field layout.

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Eco Environment News feeds

  • Savings grow as energy prices in Great Britain rise and cost of panel installation falls, analysis finds

    Households in Great Britain’s cloudiest regions could still save more than £400 a year on their energy bills by installing rooftop solar panels, research has found.

    Rising wholesale energy prices mean the potential savings from a home solar panel system have climbed in recent years, as the cost of installation has continued to fall, leading to increased demand.

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  • Who dreams of having a Euro summer now when staying in an ancient, uncooled building in the Old Town is like trying to sleep in a wood-fired pizza oven?

    This week the Euro summer comes to an end – and so does a certain type of posting on Instagram.

    Waiting at the bus stop in the grey winter dawn, a slanting rain soaking your trouser leg, you can warm yourself by scrolling your feed and seeing pictures of Australians enjoying a Euro summer. There it is again – azure Greek coves, plates of barbecued sardines, the yachts rented by the hour, and selfies on the balcony of some Paris Airbnb, drinking wine in the long, blue night.

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  • In Alaska, the Himalayas, the Andes, Greenland, and perhaps also the Alps, deadly chain reactions are just waiting to be triggered

    You may not have felt it, but the earth beneath our feet is getting twitchier, and global heating is to blame. As temperatures surge and climate breakdown accelerates, interactions between climate and geology are becoming ever more apparent – as marked by last week’s horrific events in Nepal and Tibet. We still have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to the idea that a changing climate can impact what scientists call the geosphere, but the evidence has long been incontestable.

    In 2021, a similar deluge ripped through a series of mountain valleys in the Indian Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, severely damaging two hydroelectric power plants and taking about 200 lives. In August 2025, a colossal landslide in an Alaskan fjord created a 500-metre-high wave in an area frequented by cruise ships. A few months earlier, the collapse of part of a glacier in Switzerland’s Valais canton caused a debris-laden torrent that destroyed and buried most of the already evacuated village of Blatten.

    Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL. His latest book is The Fate of the World – a History and Future of the Climate Crisis

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  • Secretive state begins repairs on ageing facilities after being revealed as worst country for leaks of potent greenhouse gas

    Turkmenistan has started plugging the mega-leaks of methane that spew from its ageing oil and gas facilities, the latest UN data shows, in a move hailed as a breakthrough.

    Methane, also called natural or fossil gas, is a potent greenhouse gas. It traps 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide and causes 25% of global heating today. Stopping leaks can be quick and cheap and, because methane breaks down in the atmosphere far quicker than CO2, this has a rapid impact, with some experts calling it the climate “emergency brake”.

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  • Scientists say system to treat contaminated wastewater offers a model for ensuring food security in a fast-warming climate

    All it took to turn the murky, heavily polluted waters of South Africa’s Stiebeuel River into a resource clean enough for irrigating a community’s vegetable plots was a collection of stones, heat-treated wood and sand.

    Without chemicals and using renewable energy, researchers from the University of Cape Town are cleaning 36,000 litres of water, polluted by sewage, chemicals, and traces of drugs and medication, every day to make it usable for growing food in a fast-expanding informal settlement along the course of the river.

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  • Organisers say people must revive spiritual relationship with food amid double threat of climate crisis and conflict

    Mending the broken food system under the threat of climate-driven weather extremes will require more than economic fixes and intensive agriculture, according to the organisers of a pioneering summit this week, who say the world must revive its spiritual relationship with food.

    Delegates from more than 60 countries and the UN will gather for the next five days in Paro in the tiny Himalayan nation of Bhutan for the world’s first “conscious food summit”, which will bring together governments and farmers, mindfulness experts and yoga therapists.

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  • More than 200mm of rain forecast in parts of South Korea, while parts of southern Europe to be 10C above average

    South Korea’s prime minister, Han Seong-sook, met officials to prepare for heavy rain expected this week, with rainfall totals across central and northern parts of the country forecast to exceed 200mm in some areas.

    South Korea was battered by heavy rainfall earlier this month and some areas were particularly hard hit. Over the weekend further thunderstorms pushed into the region and these are expected to cause disruption through Monday. This heavy rain is caused by a series of severe thunderstorms that developed over the Yellow Sea, on the western side of South Korea, and will slowly push eastwards on Monday before easing on Tuesday. These storms have been strengthened by the very warm Yellow Sea, which now has a surface temperature of 29C, 4C above the climatological average.

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  • The chicken liver sponge has sailed through a test of its ability to filter pollutants in a harbour in Spain’s Costa Brava

    In the polluted waters of Marina Palamós on Spain’s Costa Brava, Manuel Maldonado, a sponge biologist, noticed something unusual last month: red starfish had started settling in the area.

    Nearly two years earlier, the Spanish National Research Council scientist and his colleagues had begun transplanting sea sponges into the port to study whether they could survive in its polluted waters.

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  • As families await news of missing loved ones, the disaster is a stark reminder of how the climate crisis is creating a fast-growing threat. Plus, the town considered India’s ‘Jurassic Park’

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    It has been hard not to despair while watching the ruinous floods swallow parts of Nepal, and harder, still knowing that the agony compounds each passing day for dozens of Indian families whose members remain unaccounted for.

    Social media is awash with desperate pleas, photos and details of the young and old, men and women, from Mumbai to Kolkata, posted by families searching for traces of life. The disaster unfolded when a melting glacier slammed into the valley below, unleashing a deadly cascade of rock and ice down the Bhote Kashi River, which flows from Tibet into Nepal.

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  • The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions considers a change that might help the environment

    This week’s question: Would equal pay create a better society?

    If all the vehicles on the planet had their tyres pumped up with CO2, would this lock up enough carbon to lower the amount in the air significantly? Would there be other issues, such as the carbon cost of trapping it all into the tyres? Chris Coldwell, Lancaster

    Send new questions to[email protected].

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