Yesterday, in one of the inner chambers of the revived Pyramid of Tirana, a small community of friends and donors, among them bureaucrats and professors, invited by the Ministry of Environment, gathered to celebrate (without much enthusiasm) the 10th anniversary of the National Agency for Protected Areas (AKZM). The ceremonial level of the jubilee, under the elegiac title “For you, nature”, was raised by the presence of the Prime Minister, although he himself did not stay until the end.
Daniel Pirushi, executive director of this agency, gave the first speech; then, Minister Sofjani and finally, Prime Minister Rama. The activity was followed by live, on Facebook, on the prime minister's channel, with over one and a half million followers.
Little of what was said is worth addressing, briefly, here. In an effort to promote Rama's vision of urban revitalization projects, Pirushi acknowledged that such projects could serve as replicable models in the network of protected areas, concluding, and this is about the managers of the national network of these areas, that these are not guardians, but lovers of nature.
The question rightly arises. If it is not the administration of protected areas that protects them, who protects our parks? In the 3 and a half years since his appointment as head of the AKZM, Pirushi has learned to avoid responsibilities. The same pattern of avoidance has spread down into the subordinate structures. Perhaps this serves individual interests better to protect their jobs, since protecting the parks often endangers their careers. In any case, communications through language tricks cannot be superimposed on the legal responsibilities that belong to the administration of protected areas. The declarative denial of the figure of the ranger supports the evildoers and bandits who rob and destroy national parks. Meanwhile, in aid of avoidance, support for the so-called "environmental education" is also exaggerated, overestimating its role. The fact is that the rangers are not educators; nor are they biology teachers. This is another method to cover up responsibilities, to brainwash the public about the usefulness and efficiency of the administration of protected areas. Bureaucrats turned into educators are hypocrites. The administration is not a school, nor a church, but a law enforcement body.
Rama himself went even further. At the end of his speech, when he addressed representatives of environmental organizations, he mocked their efforts towards the environment, implying that they protect it to ensure their livelihood. This is not the first aggression he has undertaken against them. In 2022, he called them “annoying protectors”, while during the time when he liberalized the construction of tourist hotels within national parks (with the changes to the law on protected areas), in an attempt to paralyze their reaction, he tried to intimidate them with these words: “respect us if you want us to respect you…”.
No matter how much he tried to be somewhat more moderate this time, the mask of kindness failed to cover the aggression and chronic cynicism towards civil society. Despite the fact that such attitudes are not only opinionated and political, despite the fact that even the so-called civil society suffers serious symptoms, the hypocrisy of a society does not burden the conscience of the prime minister, but the prime minister’s “dedication” to the natural environment constitutes a separate hypocrisy that harms society. It is the same action, as Pirushi tried to do before, which aims to transfer responsibility to another; the same attack tactic that aims to discredit the political opponent, to strip the effort to protect nature of its morality in the eyes of the public.
Thanks to this mindset, although they have increased in hectares, in ten years protected areas have become impoverished in biodiversity. Two of the areas with the highest protection (Strict Zone), the Gashi Forest (Tropojë) and the Kardhiqi Fir (Gjirokastë) have lost their previous status. Renewable energy production plants have been allowed to be built within the Pishë-Poro-Nartë Protected Landscape, where the much-contested Vlorë International Airport is also being built. Tourist hotels, in addition to other infrastructure works, have secured legal support to be built within national parks. Hundreds of hectares of Mediterranean pine habitats, along the coastline, have been scorched by fires. The Vjosa, which is promoted as the last wild river in Europe, but which is actually the only national park on paper in Europe, carries every day, through its wide bed, all the feces of Southern Albania towards the Adriatic.
There is no future in this decade for protected areas. Last year the law was changed to allow development. Today the guards are being asked to leave.
One thing is certain: protected areas are protected, not revitalized; they need guardians, not prime minister’s court architects and urban planning bureaucrats. Often, heritage “revitalizations” cost us more than the revenue they could generate.
But not everyone understands this...
Artan Rama is a freelance journalist and producer who lives in Tirana. He won the second EU award for investigative journalism in 2016 and the third award in 2022. He has long been involved in reporting environmental crime stories, natural resource exploitation and sustainable development issues.
