khosq.com

Yerevan’s Mayor, Yervand Zakarian is leading the charge in the fight against climate change. With extreme weather patterns causing devastation on every continent, the World has eventually been forced to wake up and respond to the problem. The ecologically critical Northern icecap is expected to disappear completely within the next five years, so otherwise reflected sun rays are being increasingly soaked up by the warming ocean waters. The result; high winds reduce entire cities to piles of rubbish; floods devastate homes and crops; rushing waters wash away roads, bridges and mountain sides; and the number of lives lost is increasing exponentially each year. At the other end of this climate change spectrum, entire continents suffer from nearly year-long droughts, which force millions of people and animals alike to trek for tens of thousands of miles in search of survival. Hundreds of species such as the Polar Bear are being driven into extinction and others are looking for new destinations for their annual migrations.

Mayor Zakarian is in esteemed company, with Al Gore, climatologists, scientists, action groups and lobbyists, who have been warning of these cataclysmic consequences for years. But other politicians have preferred to turn a blind eye, fearful of the costs to their economies. Zakarian is one of the first to have seen the light; the losses resulting from weather extremes now far outweigh the costs of attending to the problem. Furthermore, with the right application, attending to the problem can actually be very profitable.

In that very spirit, Yerevan’s Mayor has committed the city to fighting the problem. Seeing his city inundated by ever-increasing piles of waste, despite a determined workforce of hundreds of waste collection officials, Zakarian has pulled together all his resources to join the ecology revolution.

Yerevan’s Mayor is now proudly showing off his latest ‘Green Machines’, which travel the city streets making pick-ups along the side-walks. Zakarian explains that, not only does this help to keep the city tidy, but despite the rising price for fuels, which Armenia’s householders are now having to bear, the charge could be reduced from 100 Drams to as little as 50 Drams per unit. Zakarian said he had managed to reduce the burden on Yerevan’s taxpayers by keeping the cost of his new fleet of vehicles to below three million dollars. For additional cost-effectiveness, the newly purchased ‘Green Machines’ have been given to a private company, which has relieved the city authority the responsibility for future operation and maintenance.