An ironic “birthday-party” with a dam-cake was held in Warsaw opposite the Ministry of Climate and Environment on 14th March 2023, the International day of action for rivers. The Polish “Save the Rivers” Coalition gathered people to protest against the construction of Siarzewo dam on the Vistula river. The partygoers demanded immediate consideration of NGO … Read more
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
A new economic analysis reveals that the planned E40 waterway would operate at a severe economic loss in the long-term, even under optimistic scenarios. Published on World Wetlands Day, the economic analysis by the Netherlands-based consultancy Langhout Ecologisch Advies lays bare severe implications from the construction of the E40 waterway. The planned megaproject would … Read more
An article published in The Guardian today, highlights the devastating impacts of this planned dam on the Vistula river in Poland. The Polish government is moving forward despite warnings from scientists, non-governmental organizations and society as a whole. Poland wants to build a new dam on the country’s largest river next to the village of … Read more
The European Commission recently released their proposal for Europe’s roadmap for future transport. The so-called trans-European transport network (TEN-T) policy doesn’t include the planned E40 waterway route, recognizing its high costs and environmental impacts. Instead, the focus is on multimodality, high-speed rail and climate-proof projects. The TEN-T Regulation aims to build an effective, EU-wide and … Read more
90% of river basins studied in various EU countries will still be unhealthy by 2027, reveals a new report by WWF and Living Rivers Europe. This means those countries will miss the legally binding EU target to return Europe’s polluted freshwaters to health by then. The research also identifies serious gaps within the River Basin … Read more
The environmental go-ahead for the project to construct the Siarzewo Dam on the Vistula River has been revoked by the Polish Minister of Climate and Environment, Michał Kurtyka. Non-governmental organisations, forming part of the Polish Save the Rivers Coalition have been pushing for several years for the Ministry to reassess the environmental consent for the … Read more
Polish women take a stand against the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Vistula river, which would be a key step towards the proposed E40 waterway. The inspiring movie ‘River Sisters’ by Cecylia Malik reports on the activities of a group of Polish women to protect one of Central Europe’s least impacted large rivers … Read more
About a week ago, a group of swimmers from all over Poland protested against a hydroelectric dam. Their way of protest was remarkable: the activists swam in the eight degrees cold Vistula river near the planned construction site in Siarzewo. The proposed dam would severely impact one of Europe’s last big free flowing rivers, namely … Read more
The Polish Society for the Protection of Birds, or OTOP, has just released the winners of their ‘River Theme’ photo competition. Running from July to November, the competition called on locals and visitors to submit photographs of the rivers of the Polish part of Polesia. This covered the Vistula from the estuary to Dęblin, the … Read more