A sad scene in the forest. Huge buildings, villas, concrete fences, and swimming pools are being built. Are the mountains of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) starting to look like cities? Are the mountains of BiH threatened by ecocide? What will be the consequences for a city that is one of the most polluted in the world? Predictions by experts, some of whom have been warning for years about the destruction of mountains and the consequences, are not optimistic. This, they point out, is only the beginning of what awaits us.
“A crime that could not have happened without Sarajevo”
“Our authorities are not interested in this problem at all. They are only interested in who will act as a mediator between our resources and those who have money. The best example is Bjelasnica, which should have become a national park in the spatial plan of the Federation of BiH (FBiH) a long time ago, but it did not. Everything that can be built was built on it. When you talk to our leaders, they blame the local mayor, who is extremely enterprising, but nothing would happen without the cantonal authorities,” said Anes Podic, activist of the Eko Akcija (eng. Eco-Action) Association.
“The investors and the buyers are from FBiH, without Sarajevo this crime in the mountains would not have happened,” he adds.
Architect Amir Vuk Zec points out that urban planning never deals with the outskirts of Sarajevo.
“We think urbanistically only along the railway and down the railway. Austria is a good example where the mountain has been used and preserved,” Zec explained.
“Devastation at the border of the protected area”
Dalibor Ballian from the Faculty of Forestry in Sarajevo states that in addition to Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France, and Germany are excellent examples of countries that built on the Alps, but in such a way that they adapted to the mountain, and not the other way around, as is the case in BiH.
“They did not embark on illegal construction or rapid expansion, but step by step and adapting to the mountain, not the other way around. There is a house in the forest that you can’t see, there aren’t any concrete fences, cleared forests, we want everything overnight. Look at Trebevic, it was bare 120 years ago, we are destroying the forest. Devastation at the border of the protected area,” Ballian stated.
Minister of Communal Economy, Infrastructure, Spatial Planning, Construction and Environmental Protection of Canton Sarajevo (CS), Almir Becarevic, is explicit: “What is happening on Trebevic is a crime!”
Podic emphasized that the initiative was sent to the City Council of the City of Sarajevo to revoke the status of the protected area of Dariva and Trebevic and that it was unanimously adopted.
“There is no political party that is against construction on Trebevic and everyone is in favor of expanding it to the federal part,” he added.
“If the construction on Trebevic continues, CS will only get feces,” Minister Becarevic concluded, N1 reports.
E.Dz.
