Abstract
Much has stayed the same, however. Shepherds guide vast flocks of livestock down busy inter-city motorways as if cars were still a rarity. There still isn't a McDonald's, Starbucks, or Super Wal-Mart to be found from Shkoder to Saranda. And nobody has done a thing about the crisis at the Porto Romano chemical plant.
Two years ago a team from the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) visited this abandoned industrial facility on the outskirts of Durres, Albania's second largest city and primary port. They were shocked at what they found.
First of all, the plant grounds and surrounding hills, streams, and pastures were laced with toxic chemicals. A local well was found to be contaminated with poisonous chloro-benzene at levels 4,000 times the drinking water standard of some European Union countries. Residues of the pesticide lindane registered between 1,290-3,140 milligrams per kilogram of soil; in the Netherlands, authorities intervene when lindane residues reach 2 milligrams per kilogram. Hundreds of tons of dangerous chemicals had been left in unlocked storage sheds, and the soil and water in the area was tainted with chromium 6, the toxin that made Erin Brockovich famous. The investigators realized this was one of the most contaminated spots in the entire Balkans.
But what really horrified the UNEP team was that people–lots of people–were living in and around the plant.
After the collapse of communism, hundreds of thousands of Albanians fled the extreme poverty of the densely populated north to form squatter communities on state-owned agricultural land and on the outskirts of Durres and other large towns. Some 6,000 people moved into the contaminated zone in and around Porto Romano. Their children used the plant as a playground, while family cows and sheep grazed on weeds growing from the slag heaps there. UNEP called for the emergency evacuation of the area and for the plant to be sealed off pending an international clean-up effort.
Squatter children play at the abandoned Porto Romano chemical plant in Durres, Albania.
Two years later, nothing has happened.
The plant has no fence around it, and there are no signs warning away the children playing in the dirt inside. A milk cow wanders around the facility, chomping away on whatever vegetation it finds. Driving up to the entrance, you pass through an entire squatter suburb, complete with homes built from cinderblocks and other materials scavenged from the derelict plant. Evil-looking mounds of day-glo yellow waste are scattered along the road, between homes, and in what appears to be a schoolyard.
Several families are living inside the plant itself. “We know it's bad for us here, but we have nowhere else to go,” says Flutorime Jani, a bitter 52-year-old whose family lives in what used to be a pesticide warehouse. “The authorities don't do anything to help us.” Her neighbor, Lushi Baj-rami, a 32-year-old supermarket clerk, says that new families still move into the area, some unaware that the water and soil are contaminated. They soon learn. Bajrami, who has lived on the plant's grounds since 1990, says that people get sick all the time, and several have been hospitalized.
“Most people know there's a problem, but they aren't aware of how dangerous it is,” says Romeo Eftimi, a Tirana hydrologist who has studied the site. “The negative results will come out years later, becoming apparent as their children grow up.” Officials in Durres continually promise to evacuate the area, Eftimi says, but nothing ever happens. “Even fencing the area with a simple fence just to show it's dangerous–this could be done without waiting for big money or [internationally funded] projects,” he adds, gesturing towards some kids who are throwing rocks at the concrete skeleton of the old factory hall. “This is an urgent situation.”
Porto Romano illustrates how desperate life remains for many in Albania a decade after the collapse of the country's Stalinist regime. In a country that's descended into anarchy twice in the past decade, many people are suspicious of anything the government says or does. Public property gets little respect, and people have grown accustomed to simply occupying any uninhabited space: city parks, rural countryside, even factories. The lack of public trust in state institutions makes it that much harder for this impoverished nation to build a viable economy, health care system, or basic infrastructure. In some parts of the country, a new generation of leaders is making progress in rebuilding public trust and participation. But in others, like Durres, the reverse is true.
After visiting Porto Romano, I caught up with Durres mayor Miri Hoti, who looks and acts the part of a middle-aged communist apparatchik. The situation, he declared, was the fault of the squatters themselves. “Those people are not producing anything, but they are trying to keep the area under their control,” he declared. Their presence, he said, was hampering his efforts to sell the land to foreign investors for use as a petroleum storage facility, yet his administration had no way to address the problem. “We lack the funds to fence the area and prevent new construction” by the squatters, he concluded.
National authorities were less callous, but also claimed impotence in dealing with the crisis. Tatjana Hema, Albania's deputy environment minister, says the government is working with UNEP and the World Bank to put together a rehabilitation plan, expected to cost between $10-$20 million. “Alone the Albanian government cannot afford this problem,” she says. “But it's vital that we pay attention to this issue and resolve it as soon as possible.”
Prime Minister Pandeli Marko–in Durres addressing a shipboard environmental conference organized by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew–said his administration was overwhelmed with problems. The environment ministry was only a year old. There wasn't any money to deal with the problem. “You outsiders see [government officials] failing to act on these issues, but this is not true,” Marko insisted. “This is not linked with the cold eye of a bureaucracy that lacks the spirit to see the plight of children” at Porto Romano. “This is not a bureaucratic problem, it's a budget problem,” he said.
Marko couldn't offer a coherent explanation as to why the facility could not have at least been fenced off to prevent access. Pressed on the issue he alluded to “a psychological and cultural problem” that prevented action. I couldn't tell exactly what he meant, but he could have been alluding to the population's distrust of and resistance to government interventions, which is particularly fierce when it comes to land issues. Last year officials built a barrier to block vehicles from turning into Porto Romano's access road, but squatters promptly tore it down. Squatters at Porto Romano and another contaminated factory in the southern city of Vlore also tend not to believe government warnings about the seriousness of the pollution hazard. “They think it's just a ploy to get them off the land,” says Hema.
A little good leadership can go a long way, however. In the Albanian capital, Tirana, the innovative new mayor has started restoring public faith in government, despite very limited resources.
Before becoming mayor, Edi Rama was living in Paris with his French girlfriend and working as a painter. “I dressed in very colorful clothes, a ring in my ear, and a long beard–and [my paintings] were admired by 50 friends,” says the 33-year-old mayor, now shaven and ringless but wearing red pants. His father's death brought him back to Albania and, after a short stint as Minister of Culture, he was elected mayor.
Rama promptly set about giving the capital a low-budget makeover. Gone are the hundreds of illegal kiosks that had taken over the city's parks and public spaces. New trash bins are popping up around a city where many people previously resorted to dumping household trash out their windows. Treacherous sidewalks have been repaired, while drab concrete apartment buildings are being repainted in bright colors. The goal is to restore hope to ordinary Albanians who have come to expect the worst.
“Albania is like a station where everybody is waiting for a train or a boat or a horse or a beautiful man or lady to take them away because they've lost confidence in the government and any possibility of a better life,” he says. “We don't have the resources to solve all our problems, but at least we can change the colors of the buildings, to show them that something is happening.”
“Edi Rama is one of a new breed of politicians who are emerging throughout southeastern Europe who understand that effective reform isn't just a question of following through on ruthless austerity programs,” says Balkan expert Misha Glenny, author of The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and The Great Powers. “Edi is trying to give something back to people so they feel they have a stake in the political process and the future.”
Rama uses unorthodox strategies to improve tax collection and reduce corruption. Instead of spending money to hire more police and tax collectors, he simply made procedural changes that reduced access by civil servants to situations involving cash payments. “When you have people being paid such low salaries and facing such indecent quality of life, you can't ask them all to be honest guys,” he says. “It's better to keep them far from cash.”
“So, what can you do?”
Foreign donors, accustomed to throwing money at the problem by way of their own consultants, have a hard time understanding Rama's street-level approach. After becoming Minister of Culture he announced that his top priority was to give Albanians their first movie theater. He went to the various embassies trying to raise money, arguing that it would reduce crime, improve morale, and give people hope. “They just didn't get it,” he recalls. “It was like I was asking them for money to build a toilet in the jungle.” In the end, private investors donated the money for a grand new theater that's become the pride of the capital.
Similarly, World Bank officials resisted his efforts to combat corruption by simply computerizing many procedures, with various checks that eliminated opportunities for bureaucrats to stall paperwork in the hopes of soliciting a bribe. The World Bank preferred to fund a gigantic book about corruption in Albania, “the biggest book I'd ever seen after Sovyetskaya Encyclopedia,” Rama recalls. “It was a huge book to prove that Albania is corrupt, something you can learn from the first taxi driver you meet in Tirana–and the taxi driver can give you better arguments than this book.” Rama says the “World Bank turned down his proposals because “they didn't fit in their program.” (Ultimately the Netherlands provided a small grant and the computer project went ahead.)
“When people realize that an effort is being made, that something is happening, they start to participate in the process,” he says.
Similar initiatives have spread to Elbassan, Vlore, and other cities. Public participation has also spread to rural communities in the extreme southern tip of the country, where an entire village of squatters is helping protect the architectural treasures of Butrint National Park. Butrint, a UNESCO “world heritage site,” was looted during the 1992 and 1997 periods of anarchy, and many pieces of Roman and Byzantine artwork vanished into the international black market. Butrint is remote, and park officials realized that only the local people living around its boundaries could provide real security from looters, poachers, and freelance lumberjacks. So they built trust by including village leaders when drafting plans for the future of the park, including the routes of access roads that will shape the flow of tourists through the area.
“They realize their economic future depends on protecting the park so that it can attract visitors to the area,” says archeologist Oliver Gilkes of the University of East Anglia, who works at Butrint. “We realize that the park can not be sustained without them.” •