PhotoVogue Community member Rosa Franjic captured nature and the rivers flowing from Slovenia to Albania, which once ran freely but are now obstructed, polluted, and appropriated. The photographer shed light on the environmental balance that needs preservation in those regions—a balance directly linked to water, natural resources, and the ongoing efforts against corruption and pollution led by Fondacija ACT and Save the Blue Heart of Europe. These organisations are dedicated to protecting the rivers, the ecosystem, and the inhabitants of these lands.
Words by Rosa Franjic and Tarim Contin-Kennedy
I have vivid memories from my childhood of summers passed in the parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) that my family once called home. Surely, I’m not the only one that is blessed (or burdened) by such reveries. Like many other victims of diaspora, people from throughout the Balkans region that were forced from their homes by the horrible war of the 1990s seem to exhibit a strong, collective nostalgia for their homeland. What more, from my experience it seems as if this nostalgia often revolves around a specific element of this homeland that is becoming difficult to find elsewhere: the region’s ample freshwater resources, and the bounty of natural and cultural heritage they give birth to. I remember the gushing gelid torrents of my father’s mountain village, the vast, wild forests that emanated from their banks, and the mesmerizing turquoise streams flowing through so many Bosnian cities. In the mountains surrounding Sarajevo, my family would return to a specific moss-covered spout poking out of a small crevice from which we could gather the cleanest, tastiest water and bottle it up for our weekly needs. Hand in hand, my friends and I would create a human chain to help each other cross the creek’s strong current. When I think about BiH I think about fresh water, and seemingly I’m not the only one.
In the last few decades, more than three thousand hydroelectric power projects have been presented for the WB region, with those already built or currently in construction already posing major threats to entire fluvial ecosystems and the multitude of communities that depend on them. From Slovenia to Albania, rivers that once flowed freely are being obstructed, polluted, appropriated, and the people that still depend on them deprived of their most valuable resource. Research suggests that 30% or the Balkan’s rivers are uncontaminated and that close to 50% present intact ecosystems hosting locally endemic species and levels of biodiversity largely unequaled in the rest of Europe. Yet, with amounting evidence both locally and globally of such projects ending in corruption, profiteering and large scale damage to nature and society, they continue to take place throughout the region.
These are just a few of the many things I learned this past summer while participating in a set of workshops conducted by Fondacija ACT, and Save the Blue Heart of Europe, the coalition of NGOs of which it is member. Along with other regional actors, these initiatives are battling against all odds to protect the region’s rivers and advocate for the communities that depend on these rivers to regain their place as heeded civil actors in the decision-making fundamental to their livelihoods and wellbeing. As highlighted by Fondacija ACT cofounder and director Lejla Kusturica, throughout BiH, rivers have long acted as a central figure of community wellbeing in the Balkans. Still today, in a region scarred by war and its wake, rivers con3nue to provide sustenance, inspiration, recreation and repose. As further elaborated by Lejla, the fight to protect these rivers has now taken on new significance. By drawing in Bosnians from all walks of life, the movement has become a medium for unity and solidarity over a common cause, thus countering the deep-seated ethnic divisions still very much alive in BiH.