Godfather from Athens: Here is the project that will clean the dirty water flowing into Vjosa
2024-04-17 13:02:42
TiranaPost
The Minister of Tourism and Environment Mirela Kumbaro has been invited to the two-day international conference "Our Ocean" which is being held in Athens, where she presented Albania's model based on sustainable development. Minister Kumbaro was a speaker on the panel dedicated to sustainable tourism and the blue economy, together with her Greek counterpart Olga Kefalogianni and the Minister of Entrepreneurship of the Tourism Industry.
Kumbaro said that Albania is a country that does not pollute globally and has 100% renewable energy, as it is building a model of sustainable tourism. The Minister of Tourism and Environment stopped at the model of the Vjosa river protected as a National Park, where the project for the cleaning and treatment of the polluted water that flows into it will start.
"The Vjosa River, which starts here in Greece, from the mountains of Pindi, is not only a National Park, but an important symbol, because Albania, as a small country that does not pollute anyone, can create models and symbols. For small countries, the concept of sustainability is not a luxury, but a way of life. And the challenge is: How to protect coexistence between nature, biodiversity and people? And in Albania, with 21.5% of the surface of protected areas, people are part of ecosystems, therefore ecotourism and nature tourism are not just a way to generate income, to develop the economy, but to give the people who live there for centuries an opportunity to live and not leave that place. This is Albania with 2.8 million inhabitants that welcomed more than 10 million foreign tourists in 2023 promoting Protected Areas, biodiversity, spreading tourism throughout the country. We do not compete with anyone, but we share the same tourist map where sustainability will be our common flag", said Minister Kumbaro.
She said that Albania focuses on the protection of water quality, not only with the project of treating the polluted water that flows into Vjosa from 8 municipalities, but also with all the measures that all structures by the sea must implement to increase the quality of washing water, the "EU4Rivers" project with the European Union and legal initiatives that reduce single-use plastic, such as the ban on single-use plastic bags and the soon-to-be adoption of the law on extended producer responsibility.
