From 16 to 19 November, I organised a seminar about investigative environmental journalism in Albania for professional journalists working the environment and development beats. Albania is a small country facing hard environmental and development challenges and contradictions, as it tries to overcome its Communist past and be part of the European Union. This program aimed at providing journalistic tools that allow journalists to investigate environmental issues in a country, Albania, where attention has been paid to industrial development, without taking into account its sustainability or the damage done to the environment. Particular attention was drawn to the so-called “historical pollution” sites and environment “hotspots”.
According to the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC), the copper, chromium, iron-nickel and oil industries have produced in Albania several million tons of industrial waste that were disposed without environmental and human health considerations. The human impact of many “hot spots” has been exacerbated by large scale internal migration, which has resulted in substantial illegal settlement, often within or close to the abandoned sites. The seminar was supported by the United Nation’s Development Programme (UNDP) in Albania.
