Ilissos and Kifissos rivers – Greece: Influence of human factors on basins’ evolution

Abstract

The aim of this thesis was to investigate the evolution of Ilissos and Kifissos river basins in Athens, Greece and the ways this evolution was influenced by specific human factors. The dynamics of the human-water interactions have been studied in the frame of sociohydrology and the central key was to study the impact society had on the hydrological regime of the rivers and the rivers on society, at the basins of Ilissos and Kifissos. Athens is the capital city of Greece, where almost half of the country’s population is located and the most important financial center of the country, where about 70% of country’s financial activity takes place. The time frame of this thesis covers almost the last 200 years, from 1834, when Athens became the capital city of Greece, until 2019 and takes into account the most important political and social events of these years. The human factors used in this research and which have also been used in sociohydrological studies are the community’s sensitivity and memory, along with human parameters like the social and political regime. In this research, the case study research method was selected for exploring in depth the interventions applied at the two rivers and the relations of people with water resources during the study period, by paying attention at details and attempting to correlate conditions and events. In more details, for collecting information about the evolution of social and political regime and the interventions to the rivers, the historical analysis method was used and for exploring the evolution of community’s sensitivity and memory, the method of content analysis at newspaper articles and municipal acts was chosen. The study showed that according to the way the community’s sensitivity evolved, there has been a change at the way people face Ilissos and Kifissos, from economically exploiting the rivers, towards a more environmentally sustainable management attitude. However, throughout city’s political and social history there have been periods, where the prevailing way people faced the two rivers changed drastically due to severe political and social events like wars, change of political regime and severe flood events. Moreover, the memory of the rivers influenced the way people treat the rivers, since it was found that there had been positive and negative memories related to the rivers, concerning their historical value on Athens history, memories related to their good or bad environmental condition and memories related to flood events. Usually, memory mentions were used to criticize the government for the process of projects or were used as motivation for more protection measures.