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I saw Trump's son-in-law's resort in Albania, it's an environmental disaster

2026-06-12 15:10:20Aktualitet SHKRUAR NGA ARIEL BRUNNER

The destruction of the Vjosa-Narta ecosystem in Albania is not fake news as Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama claims. It is reality. I know, because I was there when it started.

On May 7, the streets of Tirana were quiet. The Association for the Conservation and Protection of the Natural Environment in Albania (PPNEA), a partner of BirdLife International, hosted 19 conservation experts from BirdLife’s European Partners for our annual conference. We went with our colleagues to the Vjosa Delta, the last free-flowing river delta in the Mediterranean and a haven for more than 200 bird species, including flamingos and Dalmatian pelicans, nesting sea turtles and critically endangered Mediterranean seals. We thought we had gone to inspect an airport built in open violation of the law in the middle of the marshes.

To our horror, we walked straight into a vast new construction site in the heart of the protected area. We saw excavators tearing up the beach. Trucks dumping gravel and making roads through ancient dunes and pine forests. A driller was at work on the hillside. No license posted, no company named, no environmental permits of any kind.

We acted immediately. The next morning, May 8, I wrote to the Prime Minister and his Minister of the Environment, warning them of serious and partly irreversible damage. We notified the European Commission, the EU delegations in Tirana, and the press.

PPNEA, the country’s oldest environmental NGO, now in its 35th year, led the way from the ground. First with protests at the site on May 15, then outside the Ministry of Environment on May 26, and then again at the site with local residents on May 30. By the time of the third protest, the site was surrounded by barbed wire and guards aggressively mistreated the demonstrators. A video of a man being dragged away went viral. Within days, the story went global, and when the media linked the desecration to a massive real estate scheme backed by US President Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the extent of the potential corruption was immediately apparent.

This is bigger than birds. A protected wetland belongs to everyone. It is not an asset that a government can sell to a foreign billionaire in the dark. What is happening in Vjosa-Narta is a test of something more fundamental: whether Albania’s institutions exist to serve its people, or to serve its agreements. Albania wants to join the European Union, a club with rules, built on the premise that governments are accountable to citizens and the law has meaning. Vjosa-Narta is a test of precisely this premise.

Now the world is watching with hundreds of thousands of protesters filling the streets of Tirana. The bulldozers have been withdrawn, the fences have been removed, and the Narta lagoon has been reconnected to the sea. Good. But flattened dunes, felled forests, and gravel dumped on sand do not heal themselves. A tactical retreat, which would allow vandalism to resume as soon as the cameras are turned off, is not good enough.

The damage must be repaired and the future of the terrain must be ensured for this saga to truly come to an end.

The law itself has begun to be implemented. Albania’s Special Prosecution Office against Corruption and Organized Crime has frozen the assets of the Kushner-backed land company behind the scheme, part of a widening investigation into a $4 billion resort property fraud, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project has reported. Public outcry is a threat to the rule of law, and due process should follow.

Yes, social media algorithms have amplified malicious posts, which contain anti-Semitic filth and wild conspiracy theories. None of this changes what I saw. The images are on my phone and on those of my colleagues from 19 countries. Among us was a distinguished law professor, some of Europe’s best ornithologists, and dedicated environmentalists with decades of experience. Our faces are public, our names are known, our hands are clean. We are neither robots nor foreign agents.

So, no, Prime Minister Rama, you are not facing an asymmetric war from Albania’s enemies. You are facing facts. And when you deny them, people get angry. Birds know no borders and neither do we. If you enforce the law and build an economy that protects rather than exploits your people’s natural heritage, you will find PPNEA and BirdLife to be honest partners. I would welcome your face-to-face meeting. Until then, we will continue to give nature a voice, adhering strictly to the facts that flow from our DNA.

*Ariel Brunner is Regional Director of BirdLife International, one of the world's largest conservation partnerships. He has spent more than 20 years advocating for stronger nature laws across Europe and Central Asia.

Al Jazeera


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