Since 1976, the breathtaking Tara Gorge has been protected by UNESCO. But since 2017, environmental organizations and fishermen in Montenegro have been sounding the alarm. That’s when it became known that two kilometers of a new highway will be built directly along the Tara riverbed.
Mile Lazarević is president of an anglers’ club in Kolašin. For years, he and his fellow fishermen have been responsible for the protection of the Tara river’s fish population there. Now the 70-year-old's heart bleeds when he sees the huge highway piers, driven right into the riverbed: "The fish are gone, the life has disappeared from the river. Now we have a desert here!"
In total, the project involves 170 kilometers of highway that will connect Montenegro's Adriatic coast with the country's underdeveloped north and then, via Serbia, eventually with the EU. 42 kilometers from the capital Podgorica and Kolašin are as good as finished — built by the "China Road and Bridge Corporation" (CRBC), one of China's largest state-owned construction companies, which is largely financed by a loan from the Chinese Eximbank. The debt of Montenegro, which is seeking EU membership, has increased immensely.
Alexandar Mrdak has been involved from the start of construction. Hired by the CRBC as director of health, safety and environment, the Montenegrin is convinced that the highway and Chinese investors are the best thing that has happened to Montenegro's development in the last hundred years: "If we waited until the World Bank or the EU calculated what we need, we would not start for another ten, 15 years. We have to think about ourselves first," he says.