Albania · Built environment · Biodiversity

Albania’s Biodiversity and the Built Environment

A country the size of Maryland holds more than 5,550 plant species, 12 national parks and Europe’s first Wild River National Park — and in 2026 it is simultaneously defending that network in court, on the coast and in the European Parliament. This is where Albania actually stands.

Constructive Voices · Updated September 2026 · Part of the Countries Built Environment record

The Valbona Valley in the Albanian Alps — The Valbona Valley, in the Albanian Alps: Mediterranean, Alpine and wetland ecosystems pack into 28,748 km². Photo: Alexkom000 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

Albania sits at the meeting point of two climatic zones and three biogeographical regions, and the result is a density of life that few European countries can match. In the same day you can move from dunes and lagoons on the Adriatic to beech forest, glacial lakes and the limestone karst of the Albanian Alps. The country’s ecosystems and habitats support over 5,550 species of vascular and non-vascular plants and thousands of evergreen and deciduous trees, many of them threatened at European or global level.

That richness is not a footnote to the built environment conversation — it is the reason the conversation matters here. Albania is a candidate to join the European Union, which means its planning law, its protected-area management and its construction practice are all converging on EU standards at the same time as tourism and urban growth accelerate. In 2026 those two forces are colliding in public: in the Constitutional Court, in the Bern Convention, in the European Parliament, and on a beach at Zvërnec where a fence went up in front of the public.

01 / The law

The law became the habitat

Albania’s protected areas are governed by Law no. 81/2017 on Protected Areas. In 2024 the government amended it with Law no. 21/2024, and the change went to the heart of what “protected” means. The 2024 amendment altered the zoning inside protected areas in a way that conservation groups and IUCN argue opens national-park territory to construction that the original framework was designed to prevent.

IUCN publicly called on Albania to reverse the amendment, describing it as undermining the protection of national parks; the country’s leading conservation body, PPNEA, echoed the demand. The dispute is no longer a technical planning argument — it is a constitutional one.

2017Law no. 81/2017 on Protected AreasThe framework that created the modern four-category system and the National Agency of Protected Areas (AKZM).

2024Law no. 21/2024 amending itRedraws internal zoning; conservation groups say it weakens national-park protection.

31 July 2025Constitutional Court decisionThe court rules on the amendment’s legality; the protection question remains live into 2026.

17 June 2026European Parliament resolutionCalls out environmental damage and nature mismanagement as Albania’s EU-accession file advances.

Sources: PPNEA, “IUCN demands Albania reverse law undermining national-park protections”; IUCN, World Conservation Congress motion on Albania’s protected areas (2025); European Parliament resolution on the 2025 Commission Report on Albania, 17 June 2026.

Karaburun Peninsula, Albania — Karaburun Peninsula, on the Ionian coast: the Karaburun-Sazan Marine Park protects its Posidonia meadows and wreck sites. Photo: Pasztilla aka Attila Terbócs via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

02 / The coast

Vjosa–Narta: an airport, a resort, and a protected landscape

The single most contested piece of ground in Albanian conservation in 2026 is the Vjosa–Narta protected landscape, on the southern coast. It combines the Narta Lagoon, the Vjosa river delta and the Adriatic Flyway — one of the busiest migratory bird corridors in Europe. Two developments sit inside or beside it.

The airport

The Vlora International Airport was built in the Vjosa–Narta protected area. BirdLife International, EuroNatur, PPNEA and the Albanian Ornithological Society have documented the site as a wetland of international importance for migrating birds, and the project has been raised repeatedly at the Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, which requested that construction pause. A 2021 Euronews report flagged the threat to migration flyways years before completion; the environmental objection is that the runway sits on a floodplain and flyway that its own environmental assessment understated.

Sources: Bern Convention Standing Committee, Recommendation 219 and the joint Bern/CMS/UNEP-AEWA appraisal of the Vlora airport project; EuroNatur, “Airport construction in Albania threatens to destroy an important wetland area”; Euronews, “Plans to build an airport in Albania threatens migrating bird flyways” (12 March 2021).

The Albanian Riviera seen from Llogara Pass above the coast that carries Albania’s fastest tourism growth. Photo: Pasztilla aka Attila Terbócs via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The resort

The newer pressure is a resort development on the Vjosa–Narta coast backed by an investor with high-profile political connections. BirdLife International has published on the project directly, and in July 2026 the Guardian reported that Albania was warned its EU-accession path was at risk because of the resort plans. In the same season, the European Commission accused Albania of environmental damage and nature mismanagement in its accession reporting.

Sources: The Guardian, “Albania warned EU accession at risk over Jared Kushner-backed resort plans” (1 July 2026); BirdLife International, “Albania is destroying a protected wild coast for President Trump’s son-in-law — and lying to parliament about it” (2 June 2026) and “Vjosa–Narta: Europe’s last wild coast” (16 June 2026); EcoAlbania, “No EU accession on the ruins of nature!”

The Vjosa river at Kelcyra — The Vjosa at Këlcyra. Europe’s first Wild River National Park protects the river from source to sea — the protection now being tested by development pressure on the coast. Photo: Albinfo via Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (public domain dedication).

A Dalmatian pelican at Divjake-Karavasta, Albania — A Dalmatian pelican at Divjakë-Karavasta, where the colony is one of the largest in the Mediterranean and its nests are maintained by people. Photo: Nicolas Vollmer via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

03 / The volume

Five visitors per resident, and the infrastructure of a much smaller country

Albania’s tourism growth is genuine and recent. Visitor numbers have risen to the point where, in peak season, the country receives a volume of foreign visitors far out of proportion to its resident population, and the coast has absorbed most of it. The construction that follows is the physical form of that growth: apartment blocks, hotels and resort capacity.

The environmental cost is not the buildings themselves so much as the services behind them. Albania’s coastal wastewater and sewage infrastructure has not kept pace with the development, and bathing-water quality on parts of the coast has drawn European attention. In July 2025 Euronews ranked Albania among the countries with poorer bathing-water results in its annual survey — a consequence of treatment capacity, not the sea.

Official statistics have a known blind spot here: building-permit data capture municipal reporting only, so they understate total permitted development. Any figure for “construction growth” is therefore a floor, not a ceiling.

Sources: INSTAT (building permits, construction cost and national accounts), as analysed by ALTAX; Euronews, “Clear waters: where are the cleanest and least safe bathing spots in Europe?” (30 July 2025); Euronews, “Travelling to Albania? New hotels and key things to know for visitors in 2026” (21 April 2026).

04 / The protest

What happened when a fence went up on a public beach

Albania’s most effective environmental instrument in 2026 has not been a statute. It has been public participation. When a fence was erected on a stretch of coast at Zvërnec — a peninsula by the Narta Lagoon — it triggered protests over access to what residents regard as public land, and a second contested fence followed. The dispute went from a local land argument to national news and into the EU-accession conversation.

This matters for the built environment because it shows where the leverage is. In a country where designation alone has not stopped construction inside protected areas, the ability of citizens to contest a permit, a fence or a resort in public has proved the more durable check.

Source: EcoAlbania, “The second fence of Zvërnec”; Balkan Insight reporting on the coastal developments.

05 / The species

What is actually at stake, and what the field data shows

Albania’s biodiversity claim rests on species that exist at the edge of their European range — and on a handful that are found almost nowhere else.

Balkan lynx

The critically endangered Balkan lynx survives in Albania and neighbouring North Macedonia at an estimated population in the low tens. PPNEA runs camera-trap monitoring and participates in the Balkan Lynx Recovery Programme with EuroNatur; a decade of monitoring published in 2025 confirmed the core area and the species’ continuing fragility. EuroNatur has framed its survival as “a European responsibility.”

Sources: PPNEA, Balkan Lynx species page and monitoring; EuroNatur, “Protecting the Balkan lynx: a European responsibility” (September 2025); Melovski et al. (2025), Global Ecology and Conservation.

Dalmatian pelican

The Dalmatian pelican colony at Divjakë-Karavasta is one of the largest in the Mediterranean, and its survival depends partly on maintained nesting structures — conservation here is a maintenance operation, not a hands-off one. The Albanian Ornithological Society and BirdLife monitor the colony.

Sources: Albanian Ornithological Society, Dalmatian pelican colony reporting, Divjakë-Karavasta; BirdLife International.

The species nobody else has

Tulipa albanica, Albania’s endemic tulip, was described in 2010 and is known from a very small area; its habitat was designated a natural monument in 2023. Endemics of this kind are the clearest test of whether Albania’s national-monument category means anything on the ground, because a single road or quarry can remove the entire population.

Source: Shuka, Tan & Siljak-Yakovlev (2010), description of Tulipa albanica; IUCN Red List assessment; Council of Ministers decision designating the habitat a natural monument (March 2023).

06 / The building

The real green-building story is legislative

Albania’s headline green-building examples get the attention, but the shift that matters is in building law. The energy performance of buildings framework — aligned with the EU’s Energy Performance of Buildings Directive through Law no. 37 of 16 June 2025 — is the mechanism that will determine how every new and renovated building in the country performs. The European Commission’s BUILD UP platform has documented the country’s move toward climate-neutral buildings.

That legislative track is significant beyond carbon. It is the template the nature-protection debate needs: a framework with measurable obligations and reporting, imposed consistently, is precisely what the protected-areas regime currently lacks.

Traditional houses in Korce, Albania — Traditional houses in Korce — vernacular form, not imported technology. Photo: Wolfgang Sauber via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The project worth naming

On the architecture side, the Zero Emissions Municipality Building of Tirana has been the most-cited demonstration project — a public building used to show that near-zero operational emissions is achievable within Albanian procurement and construction practice. Its value is as proof-of-concept, not as a total.

Sources: Law no. 37 of 16 June 2025 on the energy performance of buildings; European Commission, BUILD UP, “Towards climate neutral buildings in Albania” (March 2026).

07 / The answer

What would actually work here

Constructive Voices’ own analysis. Six interventions, in rough order of impact.

1 · Fix the sewage before anything else

Bathing-water quality is the public’s most direct experience of the environmental record, and it is an engineering problem with an engineering solution. Treatment capacity on the southern coast is the binding constraint on tourism’s environmental cost.

2 · Make designation mean something before extending it

Albania’s protected-area percentage is respectable. Its enforcement is not. Adding hectares to the map while Law 21/2024 weakens the rules inside them increases the gap between the claim and the reality.

3 · Treat Karavasta’s nesting beds as infrastructure

The pelican colony survives because people build and maintain its nests. That maintenance is currently fragile and piecemeal. It should be funded as what it is: essential infrastructure for a species that has nowhere else to go.

4 · Put ecological conditions into tourism finance, not tourism law

Loans, guarantees and EU funds for coastal development are a faster lever than another statute. A conditionality requiring wastewater and habitat assessment would change behaviour at the point money is committed.

5 · Use the building-performance law as the template

Law no. 37/2025 shows Albania can write an enforceable framework with measurable obligations. The nature law needs the same properties.

6 · Publish the monitoring

Where designation disputes turn on figures — protected-area coverage, permit totals, water quality — the public argument improves the moment the underlying data is published rather than asserted.

Key takeaways

Albania’s biodiversity network is real but under legal and coastal pressure. The fight in 2026 is over whether Law 21/2024 holds and whether the Vjosa–Narta coast is developed further. For the built environment, biodiversity here is a live design and procurement constraint, and the EU accession file is making it more formal by the month.

Ruins at Butrint, Albania — Butrint: a UNESCO World Heritage Site inside a national park and Ramsar wetland, and the test case for whether heritage and nature designations hold. Photo: Marcin Konsek via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

TID Tower, Tirana Photo: Diego Delso via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

The old city of Berat Photo: Ivan Koev via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The numbers that matter

Albania’s biodiversity and built environment, in one place.

Territory under protection

EEA basis23.1%

UNDP basis21.7%

Plant species recorded

Total5,550+

National parks

Count12

World Heritage Sites

Count4

Ramsar wetlands

Count4

Balkan lynx estimated to remain

Individuals~15–40

Vjosa park wildlife species

Total1,100+

What to watch next

Three questions will define the next phase. First, whether the Vjosa–Narta resort proceeds and what the EU accession process does about it — the July 2026 warning makes this a test of how much environmental conditionality Brussels is willing to attach. Second, whether the protected-areas law survives its next legal challenge intact, or is amended again. Third, whether wastewater treatment on the southern coast is funded fast enough to keep the tourism economy’s environmental cost from hardening into a reputational one.

For professionals working in the built environment, the practical implication is straightforward: in Albania, biodiversity is not a distant regulatory concern but a live design constraint, and one that is becoming more formal by the year.

More on Albania and the region

AlbaniaAlbania: biodiversity and ecosystems in depth
AlbaniaAlbania’s top green buildings, reassessed
AlbaniaGreen building in Albania — the guide

Frequently asked

How much of Albania is protected?

Around 23.1% on the European Environment Agency’s accounting basis, or 21.7% on UNDP’s. The two figures use different bases; the range is given rather than a single number.

Is Albania’s Vjosa really Europe’s first Wild River National Park?

Yes. The Vjosa was declared a national park on 15 March 2023 with IUCN Category II status, the first of its kind in Europe, and was added to UNESCO’s World Network of Biosphere Reserves in 2025.

What is the Vjosa–Narta dispute?

It is a protected coastal landscape on Albania’s southern coast containing the Narta Lagoon and the Vjosa delta. An airport was built inside the protected area, and a resort development is proposed on the same coast. Both are contested by conservation bodies and at the Bern Convention.

Does Albania have the same building standards as the EU?

It is converging on them. Law no. 37 of 16 June 2025 aligns building energy performance with the EU directive framework, and EU accession is pulling planning and environmental assessment toward EU standards.

Primary sources and news citations

Republic of Albania, Fifth and Sixth National Reports to the Convention on Biological Diversity (species totals, endemism).
European Environment Agency, Europe’s environment 2025 — designated terrestrial protected areas, Albania.
UNEP, “In Albania, coupling ecotourism with conservation for economic growth” (2022).
BirdLife International: “Saving the bird paradise of the Vjosa–Narta Lagoon” (9 October 2023); “Vjosa–Narta: Europe’s last wild coast” (16 June 2026); “Albania is destroying a protected wild coast…” (2 June 2026).
EuroNatur: “Airport construction in Albania threatens to destroy an important wetland area”; “Alarming developments in the Narta Lagoon”; “Vlora Airport criticised again at the Bern Convention”; “Protecting the Balkan lynx” (September 2025); “Vjosa Wild River National Park turns three” (March 2026).
PPNEA: “IUCN demands Albania reverse law undermining national-park protections”; Balkan Lynx species page; Bern Convention suspension request.
Bern Convention Standing Committee, Recommendation 219 (Vlora Airport) and the joint Bern/CMS/UNEP-AEWA appraisal.
IUCN, “Vjosa, one of our last wild rivers, becomes Europe’s first Wild River National Park” (March 2023); World Conservation Congress motion on Albania’s protected areas (2025).
The Guardian: “Europe’s first wild river national park announced in Albania” (15 March 2023); “Albania warned EU accession at risk over resort plans” (1 July 2026).
Euronews: “Plans to build an airport in Albania threatens migrating bird flyways” (12 March 2021); “Clear waters: cleanest and least safe bathing spots in Europe” (30 July 2025); “Travelling to Albania… 2026” (21 April 2026).
UNESCO, “26 new Biosphere Reserves” (2025), Vjosa Biosphere Reserve.
European Commission: BUILD UP, “Towards climate neutral buildings in Albania” (March 2026); European Parliament resolution on the 2025 Commission Report on Albania (17 June 2026).
EcoAlbania: “The second fence of Zvërnec”; “No EU accession on the ruins of nature!”
Albanian Ornithological Society, Divjakë-Karavasta pelican colony reporting.
INSTAT and ALTAX, building permits and construction series.
Shuka, Tan & Siljak-Yakovlev (2010), description of Tulipa albanica; IUCN Red List; Council of Ministers natural-monument decision (March 2023).
Melovski et al. (2025), “A decade of monitoring the critically endangered Balkan lynx in its core area”, Global Ecology and Conservation.

Methodology and sourcing. Where sources disagree on protected-area coverage, a range is given rather than a single figure: the EEA and UNDP report 23.1% and 21.7% on different accounting bases. Tourism and construction figures are INSTAT’s, which capture municipal reporting only and therefore understate total permitted development. Species figures come from field monitoring rather than secondary compilation. The six interventions in section 07 are Constructive Voices’ own analysis. This report describes the position as at September 2026; the legal and development proceedings it covers are live.

Images. Documentary photographs carry a named photographer and licence (several via Wikimedia Commons). Remaining images are illustrative unless a caption credits a named photographer. Where an image is Canva-composed it is credited Image: Constructive Voices with Canva Pro; where it is AI-generated it is labelled AI-generated illustration — not a photograph. No AI or Canva image is used to depict a real named site, species or building. The full per-image provenance register is held with the article record.

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Albania Biodiversity and the Built Environment

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