GARDEN EXPO CONTRIBUTION TO RURAL AND SUSTAINABLE ECONOMY DEVELOPMENT

How will the philosophy of a paradise garden of 30 hectares give a city a new motivation for innovation and sustainable development to a city of one and half million people living for a better prosperity?

EXPO is not a simple Olympics like Show; it is in a sense of success management of people and the citizens of the city by convincing them around a purpose, showing that a sustainable economic success could be possible via ecology, nature and environmental redesign of the city via Garden EXPO philosophy.

EXPOs contribution to the City transformation is relatively fast and persuades people well to change at high speed. It would not be wrong to say that this is a kind of liberation movement of the city.

At the top of our main strategy pyramid, the main theme of the EXPO is the Garden of Civilizations, and the local horticulture industry sector development at international scale. With 3000 different plant species and 300 endemic plants and thousands of different kinds of saplings, Hatay owns rich fertile soil so turning this city into a complete open horticulture park is not a dream. To industrialize the sector, setting up the Flower and Botanical Research Institute, Flower and Botanical Public Academy and Marketing clusters and cooperatives and making this sector sustainable is the prime objective. Hatay has 800 medicinal and aromatic plant species so the second objective is establishing Institute and Academy of this sector, supporting the four season of health and nature tourism by transforming some of the Gardens into herbal therapy, treatment and rehabilitation centres. The third and perhaps the most important objective is the ecological agriculture and food and beverage sector, the Gastronomy sector, and we want to support Garden Expo with this sector. Unesco Gastronomy Cities network entry on November 1, 2017, Garden Horticulture EXPO 2021 HATAY acceptance in January 2017, benefited greatly to our city’s rural development strategy and sustainable urban economy. Imagine that the gastronomy villages were established in all mountains and plains and all buildings of the old town were restored like Florence and in these villages, farms can be harvested at least eight times a year and high quality bio products were harvested and they were prepared for cooking at the hands of best chefs in the restaurants of gastronomy town. Finally, think of how all of these can affect the city’s sustainable economy and its worldwide promotion.

This is our story of EXPO briefly…

EXPO 2021 Hatay is a Plant and Horticulture Olympiad for us and Unesco is a Gastronomy Olympiad for us, and of course, the preparation for these Olympiads is laborious and expensive, but we are trying to see these projects as an investment that can bring in at least a few billion Euros. After reaching this level, we want this to be sustainable.

Despite the war just beside the city, we believe in our case and we are dedicated and focused to success. In this project, our expectations from our state and universities are high. By working together, we want to build the future of Hatay, which we believe to be very bright, and we see these two Olympiads as a huge opportunity for the future of the people living in the city.