On the global tourist map, Albania is a virtual unknown, an undeveloped paradise dotted with ancient Illyrian settlements and pristine beaches that has been locked away from the rest of the world for the last five decades. It is this unsullied mystique that the Albanian Ministry of Tourism hopes will draw visitors, and their much-needed hard currency, to the shores of Albania.
But tourists are tricky creatures. They flock to untouched natural settings to escape the stresses of urban life, bringing the scourges of urbanity with them - pollution, litter and reckless development. This could potentially destroy the very gifts Albania has to offer.
The answer is eco-tourism. "Tourism in Albania is at an embryonic stage, but it has been identified as a sector where Albania has an international comparative advantage. We want tourists to find in Albania what they have failed to find in other places," says Genc Pasko, Albania's director of tourism and the REC's latest Senior Fellow.
In order to facilitate the development of eco-tourism in his native land, Pasko visited REC head office in Budapest to study the environmental implications of tourism in Central and Eastern Europe. He focused on the relationship between tourism and nature conservation by visiting protected areas and national parks in Hungary and Estonia. His main concerns centered on how to develop natural areas and encourage tourism without damaging natural settings and ecosystems. After his visits, Pasko noted that eco-tourism in these parks is quite similar to the situation in Albania: It is still at an early stage and financial resources are scarce.
Pasko says his experience as a Senior Fellow will allow him to develop sustainable tourism policies at home in Albania, where the process to bring western tourists to Albania's lakes, seas and mountains has already begun. With the help of EBRD, the Ministry of Tourism has developed a set of tourism guidelines that include environmental control provisions and impact assessments. Unfortunately, a recent report indicates that in some areas, environmental pollution is already so severe it is "incompatible" with tourism development. The report identifies the key pollution sources as agricultural run-off, domestic sewage outputs and industrial effluent.
Part of the clean-up that must parallel tourism development would be the creation of natural parks and protected areas in some of Albania's most beautiful and most ecologically sensitive areas, such as the lagoon at Diviaka, the marshes of Butrint Lake and the inland forest and lake areas near Lura.
The problem now is getting there. While ferries occasionally make the trip from Italy, and tourists are sometimes whisked over from Corfu, the rest of Albania is almost devoid of any real transportation infrastructure. The rail system, built by the Chinese to transport raw materials, is almost obsolete, and the airport at Tirana is small and out-dated, says Pasko. Roads and highways are narrow and rickety, making driving tediously slow and potentially dangerous.
Although Pasko says Albania is committed to rigorously controlling project development and avoiding overdevelopment, Albania must construct the highways and railways that will make its natural beauty accessible. Such widespread development has the potential to harm the very ecosystems that tourism authorities are banking on.