1. Knowledge: Completing the knowledge bases and decision making tools (forest maps, cadastre, olive cultivation register, records of sea grass habitats and high nature value farmland, etc.) that are necessary for planning and organizing primary production.

2. Plan: Comprehensively planning for primary production based on intersectoral local or regional development plans and focusing on:

• the rational spatial organization of activities to alleviate pressures on local resources, mitigate conflict with local communities or other economic uses and combine primary production activities with natural capital management and conservation needs;
• the competitive advantages, making use of local breeds and varieties in production and marketing their special flavor and environmental qualities, standardizing and labeling local products and promoting small-scale non-intensive production and its specific environmental, social and quality attributes. 

3. Management: Managing inputs, residues and waste/run-off to optimize product quality, cut production costs and create added revenue sources.

4. Support: Revising the subsidy system to support processes and areas that bring a clear competitive advantage or environmental benefit and to discourage opportunistic involvement in production. Although the structure of the subsidy system has been largely fixed by historical data, the Common Agricultural Policy and rural development measures provide the opportunity to change the subsidy policy and implement it for the benefit of a sustainable primary production sector.

5. Certification: Certifying and labeling products and production processes. Product certification and labeling is internationally one of the main tools for establishing and promoting competitive advantages and traceability. The following are the main certification categories, which should be widely promoted and applied:

• Integrated management certifies the implementation of good production practices, following the product throughout the market chain. Sustainable forest management (FSC, PEFC) and sustainable fishery (MSC) certifications fall into this category. Adapting and implementing international standards for fish-breeding should also be considered a priority. 
• Organic production certifies the implementation of organic standards in agriculture, animal husbandry and fish-breeding as well as in processing their respective products. 
• Special labeling may be used to highlight certain quality, flavor or geographical attributes of products, capitalizing on specific consumer receptions and/or ensuring the satisfaction of specific consumer preferences. Emphasis must be placed in developing a national labeling system for protected area products.

6. Interconnection: Connecting activities and sectors. Planning concrete policies and undertaking initiatives to effectively interconnect rural activities is necessary to achieve economies of scale, increase the economic and ecological sustainability of exploitations, alleviate pressures on natural resources and boost the marketability of products. Specific objectives include:

• the multiple use of land and resources through measures such as the combination of animal husbandry with tree cultivation, the localized installation of renewable energy systems in fields and agricultural facilities in ways that do not alter their character, and well-planned grazing in forest areas to serve forestry objectives;
• the interconnection of distinct sectors, starting with agriculture and tourism and aiming at utilizing tourist activities (hospitality and restauration) to promote local products and creating local market supply chains between producers and tourism enterprises; 
• the multiple use of infrastructures and labor aiming at the systematization and organization of multiple job holding and the creation of revenue and employment stability, particularly for vulnerable groups (youth and women) and groups that depend on seasonal employment.

7. Training: Even though primary production plays an unquestionably important part in society and the national economy, human resources employed in it are very weak. Interventions are proposed in the following three fields:

• developing the human resources involved in production, which currently have very little training and, as a result, lack the ability to develop efficient business plans, adopt good practices, and achieve and manage products with high quality attributes. Given the extent of seasonal employment of personnel with no relevant training, the most necessary interventions are constant consultation and the supervision of the productive process.
• strengthening decision-making structures by training members of the administration, developing local decision-making bodies and creating a competent central structure that will accumulate the necessary experience and knowledge to provide guidance on practices and decision-making at a local level.
• creating cooperation and co-exploitation structures by supporting producer groups in developing strategic and business practices, know-how exchange processes and networks and competitive products, as well as by promoting collective exploitation schemes, such as animal husbandry parks, collective processing and standardization activities, and the development of collective infrastructures and activities to process and utilize production waste and residue (e.g., producing fuel out of agricultural residue and processing olive mill wastewater).

Special focus: forestry

As a land-related activity, forestry has many different aspects connected with rural development in general. The structure of the administration related to state and private forests and forestry in general is complex and involves many institutions with different perspectives, interests and capabilities. Today, the crisis has hit most of the public and private sector activities, and developing and exploiting primary production has become an important way out of the crisis with clear prospects of ecological sustainability and economic prosperity. As a primary economic activity, forestry could play an important part in this: it engages or could engage different production sectors in managing almost half of the area of Greece (of which 74% is public land) to the benefit of both the national economy and the natural environment. 

The country’s forest wealth presents a double opportunity:

• Ecological: when practiced according to the forest management plans that have been approved by local forest authorities, forestry cleanses and revitalizes the ecosystem and, through the presence of people whose livelihood depends on the forest, provides protection against wildfires and environmental crime.
• Economical: Forestry is an economic activity with significant growth prospects regarding high quality products and services, which can provide the sector with a strong competitive advantage in the international market.

A basic precondition for resolving the issues affecting forestry in Greece is strategically recognizing it as an economic activity that protects forest ecosystems, funds forest management and contributes substantially to the country’s GDP and to the creation and conservation of valuable and productive employment.

Special focus: aquaculture

Producing ecologically sustainable and nutritionally safe aquaculture products should be an objective in a comprehensive plan to restructure primary production, particularly given that aquaculture has always exhibited active and extroverted marketing and significant exporting activity and potential and is closely linked to other sectors. 

• The most important challenges that the aquaculture sector has to address are:
• the lack of quality certification for products and production processes,
• competition for the use of sea and coast with other important economic activities, such as tourism and the impact on marine environment of both not implementing legislation and using substances that cause pollution and/or eutrophication.

Given the decline of industrial activity during the past decades, the crisis must be faced as Greece’s opportunity to lay out a vision and a national strategy and policy to boost manufacturing activity and create conditions of:

• Autonomy: reducing the dependency on raw materials and fossil fuels by recycling, reusing and making optimum use of raw and intermediate materials.
• Innovation: promoting applied research and development (R&D) for innovation and the production of high quality and competitive products.
• Certainty: managing and addressing the institutional and legal risks emanating from environmental violations that carry severe penalties.
• Cleanliness: reducing pollutant emissions and the overall environmental footprint.
• Efficiency: efficiently using, saving and reusing natural resources.
• Stability: increasing the real economy’s resilience to the unpredictable fluctuations of raw material prices in international markets.

The concept of green or environmentally sustainable industry includes all the industrial and productive activities that substitute fossil fuels (mostly carbon and oil) with renewable or less intensive energy sources and productive activities that yield products with a small ecological footprint. In Greece, there is a considerable field for developing ecologically sustainable entrepreneurship in the sectors of food, energy, ecological chemicals (detergents, paints, etc.), sustainable waste management and building material production, among others. There is an important gap in research for innovative methods and products with low ecological footprint and high added value, which must be filled while connecting research to production.

One of the most important sectors of the Greek economy, tourism produces about 16% of the annual GDP. Tourism-related numbers have shown an impressive increase over the past four decades. Foreign tourist arrivals went from 462,857 in 1961 to 14,918,177 in 2002—increasing by 30 times—and to 18,754,593 in 2007. According to the World Tourism Organization, Greece holds the 15th place in the world’s tourist receiving countries.

In the European Union, the environment seems to be the main factor in choosing a destination. Therefore, in Greece, the natural environment should be treated as the principal tourism product, hence clearly requiring protection and sustainable management.

• Greek tourism can be briefly described as follows:
• mass tourism organized mostly by tour operators;
• 3S tourism: sea, sun, sand;
• intense seasonality and concentration in the country’s coastal and island zones;
• significant yet unmeasured ecological footprint;
• questionable relation between the cost and quality of services.

Today, the Greek tourist development model is in crisis. 3S tourism became increasingly popular and thrived thanks to the rise in purchasing power. Mass tourism offer grows rapidly to meet the constantly increasing demand. This results in the rapid growth of specific tourist destinations. At some point, however, this growth rate begins to slow down. Greece is a tourist receiving country currently witnessing the decline of the 3S and the sunlust models and should have turned its focus to reforming, changing and enriching its tourism product years ago.

To prevent the worst consequences of climate change, the reduction of global emissions by 40% by 2020 and by 95% by 2050 is a WWF global priority, to be achieved by cutting power generation emissions down to zero. The course towards this objective is outlined in the Energy Report: 100% Renewable Energy by 2050¹. Concerning Greece in particular, WWF Greece has released a study entitled A Low Carbon Vision for Greece in 2050², which demonstrates that a 93% reduction of emissions in electrical energy generation by 2050 is feasible.

In recent years, in Greece as well as internationally, clean energy policies have been blamed for the rise in electrical power prices. These allegations are, of course, far from the truth. To disprove this misleading myth, WWF Greece has released a series of papers, interventions and proposals. A section dedicated to deconstructing said myth is included in our proposal for a Living Greek Economy.

In a policy statement³, WWF Greece highlighted the most significant problems that the development of renewable energy sources (RES) faces in our country: a fickle central policy, questionable investor and administration practices that distinctively underestimate the ecological value of certain areas, and social disdain for RES accompanied by ostensible objections regarding the works as well as valid environmental and social concerns.

¹WWF International. (2011). The Energy Report. http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/climate_carbon_energy/energy_solutions

²WWF Greece. (2008). A Low Carbon Vision for Greece in 2050. Athens, October 2008 .
http://climate.wwf.gr/images/pdf/epistimoniki_ekthesi_wwf_low.pdf (in Greek)

 ³Renewable energy sources. WWF Greece policy statement. (January 2013). WWF Greece. http://www.wwf.gr/images/pdfs/Renewables-position-paper-January-2013.pdf (in Greek)

The financial sector plays a crucial role for the health and operation of the economy, since it is the circulatory system of modern economies and determines, to great extent, the volume of business and household savings and their redirection to financing and investment.

Handling environmental externalities requires that the following approaches and indicative measures be adopted by institutional investors.