Opening of the exhibition Marshlands of Mesopotamia, 5 July Athens

The photographic exhibition Eden: Marshlands of Mesopotamia opened for the first time in Greece during the Rodos Ecofilms Festival in June 2006. Due to its considerable success the organizers, the Embassy of Canada, MedWet and Ecofilms in collaboration with the Hellenic Society decided to bring it to Athens.

Hosted at the offices of the Hellenic Society for the Protection of the Environment, located in the old city quarters of Athens, the exhibition will be open between 4-14 July. Other than Greece it has opened in Canada, in Waterloo and Ottawa(March and August 2006), in the Conference of the Contracting Parties of the Ramsar Convention o­n wetlands, Kampala, Uganda (November 2005) and in the United Kingdom (April 2006). It is scheduled to open in Jordan before it returns to Iraq where it is planned to be offered to the Museum of Natural History.

The official opening accompanied by a reception took place o­n 5 July, in the presence of the MedWet Secretariat Coordinator, Spyros Kouvelis, the Counsellor of Political and Public Affairs of the Embassy of Canada in Greece, Pamela O’Donnel and Director of the Hellenic Society, Dimitris Dimopoulos.

The photographs focus o­n life and nature in a wetland that until the recent past was the largest wetland in the Middle East, found in South east Iraq.

Albeit important o­n a global level, wetlands of Iraq have so far received little international recognition. For this reason, the effort undertaken by the Canadian-Iraqi Initiative to survey wetlands of Mesopotamia brings hope for the future of the area. Moreover these vivid pictures taken during the collection of scientific data help the international community become witness to the ecological and social wealth and to raise international recognition of its values.

Updated on 7/12/2006 4:18:41 PM.