It is the jewel of the Adriatic. Its shimmering waters feed a rare colony of Dalmatian pelicans, the world’s largest freshwater birds, sustain the endangered Albanian water frog, and host loggerhead turtles on its encircling dunes. The Nartë lagoon is at the heart of the extensive and largely unspoiled delta of Albania’s Vjosë River, which researchers consider Europe’s most intact large river delta.
But that accolade won’t save it. The Vjosë delta and its lagoon are under siege. They are set to become the victims of a series of massive coastal tourist developments, partly bankrolled by a company set up by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The hotels and luxury villas will accommodate up to a million visitors arriving annually at a new international airport currently being built on salt marshes around the lagoon.
Until the fall of the Iron Curtain that walled off communist Eastern Europe from the capitalist West, Albania was the 20th century equivalent […]
Albania is a poor country whose people have suffered greatly under autocratic rule. If the elites of Europe value the ecosystem of this river, what are they willing to pay to keep it pristine? If not, we encounter the typical liberal conceit of having the poor remain poor so they can feel better about themselves for “preserving the environment.”
I have no love for the exploitation of developers; however, the locals deserve a good quality of life, and these tradeoffs have to work for everyone, not just the few.