In September 2025, the Vjosa River in Albania was recognised as a UNESCO biosphere reserve — in our view, a purely symbolic achievement that now needs to be translated into concrete action to live up to the new designation.
In 2023, the Vjosa was designated Europe's first wild river national park, and now it has been designated a UNESCO biosphere reserve. However, the Albanian government has yet to prove that this will actually provide better protection for the river.
© Nicolas JehlyTogether with our partner organisations, EcoAlbania and Riverwatch, we welcome the decision to designate the Vjosa as a UNESCO biosphere reserve; at the same time, however, we emphasise that the designation must be more than a mere symbolic act. We view it as an obligation for the Albanian government to actively protect the river and its surroundings from threats such as water abstraction, oil pollution, gravel extraction, and waste disposal. Together with our partners on the Vjosa, we demand that UNESCO recognition be understood as a starting point for concrete action – so that the Vjosa is not only celebrated as a fig leaf for the government in Tirana, but is protected in the long term.
Read the joint statement from the campaign partners here.