Regional meeting on environmental protection

TIRANA, April 5 – Environment ministers of Macedonia and Montenegro, as well as the representatives of the international organizations (World Bank, United Nations Environment Programme in Geneva and the Global Water Partnership Organization) met in capital Tirana to discuss on cooperation with the Albanian authorities on issues related to the cross-border waters.
The Albanian government considers water resources, the flora and fauna of the Ohrid, Prespa, Shkodra lakes and water basins as a big asset for the tiny Balkan country. Besides the rational exploitation of the water resources there are identified several problems related with flooding risk that several rivers pose and especially the Drini River when there is heavy rainfall not only in the Albanian territory, but even in Macedonia and Montenegro, as it happened last winter.
Albania has approved several precautionary measures and is working to adopt them while targeting to create a stabilized situation especially on the Drini River basin and prevent new floods in the future. The government has planned building of the embankment on the Buna River, the building of Shkodra bypass as well as the further improvement of the drainage system all over the area of N쯳hkodra. Work is underway for building of Skavica hydropower plant while it is already signed the agreement with Montenegro on deepening the Buna River bed.
There is a general opinion on the need of concluding new agreements on cross-border waters to replace the expired agreement with the former Yugoslavia. Tirana has expressed its readiness to support a special project on the Drini River basin by the World Bank and GEF with the respective countries of the region so that to give final solution to the complex problems related with this basin.
Participants stressed the need of joint actions and initiatives so that to accelerate finding solutions of mutual interest and launching of concrete actions.
In another activity in Bulgaria the chiefs responsible for protection of the population in case of natural disasters and major accidents in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Slovenia and Croatia signed an agreement setting up a Council for Civil-Military Emergency Planning of the countries of Southeastern Europe.
Representatives of Albania, Romania and the US attended the official ceremony. Greece, Turkey, Romania and Albania participated from the outset in the establishment of the Council. Turkey and Greece did not sign the agreement for technical reasons.