Home » Posts tagged 'bulgaria'

Tag Archives: bulgaria

Water Worries and Drought Tolerant Plants

August 24, 2022

Water Worries and Drought Tolerant Plants

A Summer Update from Shipka

This summer has been incredibly hot and dry, and even some of the older and more established trees have looked under strain. With increasing periods of hot and dry weather and pressure on both the mains water supply and our perennial source from the river, designing our gardens to be as resilient as possible seems the best way forward. During this post, we’ll be looking at the challenges we’ve faced this season with our usual water supply and take a look at some useful drought tolerant plants that have faired well in dry and hot conditions.

Our project is located in the town of Shipka on the foothills of the Balkan mountains in central Bulgaria. As such our gardens have a gradient that means we can benefit from a gravity-fed perennial water source, a local mountain stream. The stream water can be diverted into purpose-built cement channels that run down the sides of many of the streets and under roads, making this water accessible for many households. It can also be diverted into the fields. It’s an incredible system although somewhat neglected. All of our gardens were designed to take advantage of this resource. In the image below you can see the main path of the stream through the mountain, and then the diversion created. The highlighted plot here is one of our gardens, Phronesis. There is approximately a 3m drop from the north to the south of the plot and the slope is more or less even from east to west.

The mountain stream can be diverted into the site from the north

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Eastern Europe Is Turning Into An Energy Battleground

November 29, 2019

Eastern Europe Is Turning Into An Energy Battleground

Bulgaria has agreed to allow NATO to use its Black Sea port for naval coordination efforts as tensions rise between the Western military alliance and Russia.

The agreement was reached following a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov at the White House on November 25.

NATO has bolstered its defenses in Eastern Europe, including the Black Sea region, which is becoming a new frontier for energy geopolitics, after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and seized Ukrainian Navy vessels last year.

NATO earlier this year carried out military exercises in the Black Sea that involved more than 20 ships and crews from Romania, Bulgaria, Canada, Greece, the Netherlands, and Turkey to the consternation of Moscow. Russia’s Black Sea fleet is based in Crimea.

“Viewing with concern the security situation in the Black Sea, the United States welcomes Bulgaria’s offer to provide a maritime coordination function at Varna in support of NATO’s Tailored Forward Presence initiative,” the United States and Bulgaria said in a joint statement.

U.S. and Bulgarian officials will hold high-level meetings to discuss further maritime military cooperation, the statement said.

NATO members Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey border the Black Sea along with Ukraine, Georgia, and Russia. Both Ukraine and Georgia have expressed a desire to join NATO.

Trump hosted Romanian President Klaus Iohannis last month as part of a series of engagements with leaders from Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Austria.

Prior to his arrival in Washington, Borisov told journalists that he would not allow a permanent NATO military base on the Black Sea, a move that would anger Russia.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“We Are Heading Into Anarchy”: Official Says EU Will “Completely Break Down In 10 Days”

February 25, 2016

“We Are Heading Into Anarchy”: Official Says EU Will “Completely Break Down In 10 Days”

Norwegian PM Erna Solberg doesn’t want to have to skirt her country’s responsibilities under the Geneva Convention and she doesn’t want to trample over human rights either, but she will if she has to.

“It is a force majeure proposals which we will have in the event that it all breaks down,” Solberg said, in an interview with Berlingske, describing new measures she believes Norway may have to take if Sweden buckles under the weight of the refugee influx which saw some 163,000 asylum seekers inundate the country last year.

Solberg is effectively prepared to turn everyone away and go into lockdown mode should everything fall apart completely, causing Europe to descend into some kind of lawless, Hobbesian, free-for-all.

If that sounds far-fetched or hyperbolic consider that on Thursday, EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos warned that the bloc has just 10 days to implement a plan that will bring about “tangible and clear results on the ground” or else “the whole system will completely break down.”

Avramopoulos also cautioned that a humanitarian crisis in Greece and in the Balkans is “very near.” Moves by countries to adopt ad hoc, state-specific measures to stem the flow are exacerbating the problem, the commissioner contends.

“We cannot continue to deal through unilateral, bilateral or trilateral actions; the first negative effects and impacts are already visible,” he said. “We have a shared responsibility –- all of us -– towards our neighbouring states, both EU and non-EU, but also towards those desperate people.”

By “the negative effects,” of unilateral actions, Avramopoulos is likely referring to the bottlenecks that are leaving thousands stranded in the Balkans. The chokepoints are being pressured by a series of border fences that have been erected over the past six months and the problem is exacerbated by stepped up border checks. In short: we’re witnessing the death of the bloc’s beloved Schengen.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

War Drums Beating: Bulgaria Blocks Russian Access To Its Airspace For Syria Flights

September 8, 2015

War Drums Beating: Bulgaria Blocks Russian Access To Its Airspace For Syria Flights

On Monday we flagged a notable escalation in the build up to the geopolitical “main event” in Syria where, thanks largely to the West’s ambition to break Gazprom’s leverage over Europe, the US and Russia are one “accidental” run-in away from taking the “proxy” out of the term “proxy war.”

With the Kremlin now ramping up its military presence around the Assad stronghold of Latakia, the US is scrambling to do anything and everything in its power to slow the Russian build up – including putting pressure on Greece to deny Russia the use of its airspace for supply flights to Syria.

This isn’t the first time Greece has found itself in the middle of Cold War 2.0, as Athens (and notably Panagiotis Lafazanis) used Greece’s geographical position to field competing gas pipeline bids from Washington and Moscow during the height of the country’s fraught bailout negotiations.

So while we wait for Greece to pick a side between the US and Russia by either allowing Moscow to use its airspace on the way to supplying Assad or else snubbing the Kremlin and jeopardizing a potentially lucrative gas deal, at least one country has been quick to make a decision: Bulgaria…

Al Arabiya English

✔@AlArabiya_Eng

#BreakingNews Bulgaria has denied Russia use of its airspace for supply flights to Syria http://ara.tv/9p2sy