Save Polesia Partnership’s stark warning: abandon E40 waterway megaproject or vital wetlands, grasslands, forests, and mires across Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine face catastrophe. A controversial megaproject that aims to connect the Baltic and Black seas via a 2000km-long navigable shipping channel through Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine – known as the E40 inland waterway – would be … Read more
On the 29th of July 2022, Ukraine terminated its bilateral agreement with Belarus on inland navigation. Is this the end of the potentially devastating E40 waterway project? The idea of the E40 waterway was developed by Polish, Belarusian and Ukrainian governments. It aims to link the Baltic Sea and Black Sea through a 2,000 km-long … Read more
A recent article in the Belarusian economic newspaper, Economic Gazeta (Экономическая Газета), condemns government plans to increase budgetary support for water transport in the country and the construction of the E40 waterway along Polesia’s rivers. The economic newspaper quotes the call from Belarusian business associations to recognize the fact that rivers and canals have lost … Read more
During the first weekend of June, Save Polesia partners – APB-BirdLife Belarus and Bahna – held the fifth annual “High Five Pripyat!” kayak tour. The event aims to draw attention to the beauty, and huge value, of the Pripyat and its tributaries if they are left in an unaltered, natural form. Overall about 30 people … Read more
On the 27th of April 2021, Save Polesia partners APB-Birdlife Belarus and Bahna will hold an online roundtable discussion on the “Potential of agro-tourism and ecotourism in Polesia”. The event will be supported by a number of environmental organisations, as well as the business community. Themes to be covered include the potential for ecotourism in … Read more
Belarus’s Council of Ministries officially announces a 10,000-hectare expansion of the Almany Mires Nature Reserve. The reserve now covers more than 104,000 hectares – about the size of Hong Kong. Almany is Europe’s largest intact transition mire, and together with protected areas across the border in Ukraine, it forms the largest complex of bogs and mires on the continent. This unique landscape is one … Read more
Unacceptably high costs and risks associated with the E40 waterway, yet the programme is moving forward. The costs as well as the risks associated with the planned E40 waterway are unacceptably high – according to an expert economic assessment conducted by three leading business associations of Belarus. The study’s authors analysed the 2015 E40 waterway … Read more
Save Polesia partners call to save the Pripyat and stop the E40 waterway Every year, the Belarusian conservation organizations APB-BirdLife Belarus and Bahna organize a kayaking event on the Pripyat river to call for its protection and the prevention of the E40 waterway. This year, the so-called “High Five Pripyat!” (“Pripyat day piat!”) event started … Read more