As green as hell
Since the International Energy Agency classified hydropower energy as clean and renewable, there has been a true gold rush on waterways for dam development. In the Balkans, western financial institutions, including the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, already invested hundreds of millions of euro’s into building dams. Institutions like The World Bank keep on planning loans to build even more in this region. In Albania some 435 hydropower dams have been planned. It is called progress. It is, in fact, an ecological catastrophe of the first degree, seeing to the destruction of entire ecosystems and their unique flora and fauna, including the potential extinction of many a critically endangered species.