An environmental disaster looms in Albania
It is good that climate change enthusiasts Gov. Maura Healey and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu will attend Pope Francis’ climate summit in Rome in May.
The summit is part of the Pope’s Initiative on Climate Resilience that brings researchers, policy makers and leaders of faith together to study and discuss changes in the climate. At the May 15-17 conference, Healey is scheduled to discuss “Governing in the Age of Climate Change” while Wu will give a talk on “Governance, Health and Energy.’” All to the good.
But if Healey, Wu and, indeed, the Pope himself want a clear example of a threat to the climate and the environment, all they have to do is look out the window, so to speak.
There across the Adriatic Sea on the Albanian coast — an hour by plane from Rome — is a proposed massive coastal tourist development that environmentalists say will destroy what is probably the last pristine ecosystem in Europe.
It is the 10,000-acre Narta Lagoon, the center of a grand and largely unspoiled wildlife sanctuary delta-fed by Albania’s Vjosa River, which is the last pristine, free flowing river in Europe.
An environmental committee of the Council of Europe called the lagoon “a temple of nature,” and with good reason. The now threatened lagoon is, among other things, the habitat for more than 220 bird species, including the stately Dalmatian pelican, as well as a stopover migration route for birds from Europe to Africa and back.
The nature preservative is already under attack with the construction of an international airport — opposed by the environmentally concerned European Parliament and European Commission — on the north side of the lagoon. The port city of Vlora is just to the south.
It means that huge jets will fly over the lagoon to get to and from the airport to the detriment of wildlife.
Albanian officials say the airport is necessary to expedite the increasing flow of tourists lured to the fine beaches further down the coast as well as to create jobs and improve the economy.
If construction of the airport were not controversial enough, Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, is proposing to build hotels and luxury villas in and around the lagoon.
Albanians in the region are already calling the villas “Trump Villas.”
Included are plans to transform the nearby abandoned island of Sazan, once a Cold War military bastion eight miles off the coast of Vlora, into a sort of condo heaven for the well-heeled. The sunsets are spectacular.
What is troubling is that Albania is the most politically corrupt country in Europe, and its capital Tirana is a haven for the laundering of drug money, much of which accounts for the boom in office buildings and high-rise condo structures.
So, it is not surprising that the government, headed by Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama, is falling over backwards to help Kushner. Kushner and is wife Ivanka have visited Albania twice and have met with Rama.
While the project, despite damage to the environment and the climate, may be economically good for the country, it will certainly be good for the politicians.
It was only last December that disgraced former FBI counterintelligence chief Charles McGonigal, who had met with Rama, was sentenced to over two years in prison for accepting $225,000 in cash from a former Albanian intelligence agent with ties to the prime minister. Rama has denied any wrongdoing.
Kushner, a former top advisor to Trump, is financing the project through Affinity Partners, an investment firm he founded upon leaving the White House in 2020. It reportedly has a bankroll of $3.1 billion, most of it from the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund.
If Healey wants to govern in the age of climate change, it might behoove her, the mayor, the Pope and fellow climate change warriors to take a flyby look at “a temple of nature” before it is destroyed.