A fishing boat glides across the shimmering surface of Europe’s oldest lake, a haven of biodiversity and a UNESCO World Heritage Site — one that conservationists say faces multiple development threats.
Lake Ohrid, which straddles the mountainous border of Macedonia and Albania, has been in existence for up to 3 million years and is home to more than 200 species of flora and fauna found nowhere else in the world.
However, huge infrastructure plans on the Macedonian side have alarmed environmentalists and UNESCO, which has called on the country’s authorities for an urgent assessment of the potential cumulative damage.
Photo: EPA
The proposals include a large ski complex and an expressway through the lakeside Galicica National Park, itself a protected area home to thousands of plant and animal species.
Local activists are also incensed by proposed “touristic development zones” and other urbanization plans on Ohrid’s shores, including a marina and apartment buildings.
They fear the destruction of a 50-hectare wetland serving as a crucial natural filter to the lake, pointing to a draft impact assessment, commissioned by the local government, that warns of unavoidable damage.
Officials insist they will protect Ohrid’s heritage, but campaigners accuse them of manipulation and violating laws to allow such developments to go ahead.
The “tsunami” of planned infrastructure projects, if implemented, “means that you can just say goodbye to the UNESCO World Heritage Site,” said Aleksandra Bujaroska, an environmental lawyer in the Balkan country.
Bujaroska is part of the citizens’ association Front 21/42, which is campaigning for a moratorium on all of the “destructive” plans.
“The big issue with all of these procedures... is the constant breach of public participation,” said the 30-year-old lawyer, who grew up in Ohrid and is based in Skopje.
UNESCO has assigned World Heritage status to more than 1,000 sites in the world, but fewer than three dozen are listed as both “natural” and “cultural” sites. The Ohrid region is one of them.
On the lake’s Macedonian shores, the city of Ohrid is one of Europe’s oldest human settlements with a wealth of Byzantine-style icons, frescoes and churches, which together with the lake’s natural beauty drew more than 200,000 tourists last year.
“It’s amazing. The beautiful thing is it’s so close to nature,” visiting Polish student Aleksandra Walerych said by the 13th-century Church of St John at Kaneo, which overlooks the lake and is thought to be the most photographed spot in the country.
The lake covers an area of 358km2, two-thirds of which lie in Macedonia and are covered by the World Heritage status, and work is under way to try to extend this to the third lying in Albanian territory.
However, at its annual meeting in Istanbul in July last year, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee said it “notes with concern that a number of large-scale infrastructure projects have been proposed” on the Macedonian side.
It warned that Ohrid could find itself on the “List of World Heritage in Danger” if threats to the site were confirmed, suggesting alternative routes and locations should be identified for major projects.
Sites can lose their heritage status if they are deemed to be improperly protected.
Alexandra Fiebig, project officer for Europe and North America at UNESCO’s World Heritage Center, said there had been “a lot of close contact with the [Macedonian] authorities” and a UNESCO “reactive monitoring mission” was due to start work in Ohrid soon.
Of the raft of controversial proposals, expected to involve both private and public investment, some fall under the remit of central government ministries while others are part of municipal plans.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, a potential investor in the expressway, says it is “assessing the feasibility” of the project.
Macedonia’s conservative VMRO-DPMNE party, in power nationally since 2006, has been accused by critics of authoritarianism and corruption, but narrowly won a general election last month.
Ohrid Mayor Nikola Bakraceski, from VMRO-DPMNE, insists environmental regulations have been followed and the public sufficiently consulted in city planning.
Bakraceski accuses activists of having “political agendas” and lacking expertise.
He said that one of his priorities is finding resources for a 54 million euro (US$57.6 million) upgrade of the Ohrid area’s antiquated and damaged waste collection system, in order to protect the lake.
On a national level, the government has prepared an “action plan” to implement the requests of the Istanbul meeting, said Lidija Topuzovska, the top Macedonian official for UNESCO matters, without giving specific details.
“The general intentions are that all standards for preserving the cultural and natural values of the Ohrid region are respected,” she said.
However, campaigners are not reassured.
Another citizens’ group, Ohrid SOS, is campaigning to protect Studenchishte Marsh, the last remaining wetland by the lake.
One of its members, Macedonian scientist Nadezda Apostolova, has written in depth about the importance of the marsh — both for its own biodiversity and its role in cleaning pollution flowing into the lake.
A professor at Spain’s University of Valencia, she said the wetland is already under “severe attack” from construction as trees are gradually replaced by concrete.
Activists said they are not against all types of development, but want to see transparent plans that protect the “jewel” of the landlocked nation and keep it attractive to visitors.
“Everything is at risk with these developments,” Apostolova said.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RELATIONS: Cultural spats, such as China’s claims over the origins of kimchi, have soured public opinion in South Korea against Beijing over the past few years Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday met South Korean counterpart Lee Jae-myung, after taking center stage at an Asian summit in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s departure. The talks on the sidelines of the APEC gathering came the final day of Xi’s first trip to South Korea in more than a decade, and a day after his meeting with the Canadian prime minister that was a reset of the nations’ damaged ties. Trump had flown to South Korea for the summit, but promptly jetted home on Thursday after sealing a trade war pause with Xi, with the two
RSS