Swarms of mosquitoes and plump, shiny flies rise from the undergrowth as a group of protesters drag their canoes onto the low banks of the Pripyat river in Belarus. The group – a coalition of environmental activists, fishermen and locals – are united in opposition to a project which could, in a few years’ time, turn this meandering river into an international shipping route known as the E40 waterway.
The aim of the E40 project is an ancient one: to link the Black Sea with the Baltic, creating a navigable passage through Eastern Europe. The 1250-mile channel would run from Kherson in Ukraine, through Belarus, to Gdansk on Poland’s Baltic coast, a passage that was used by Viking longships on their way to Constantinople to connect with the Silk Road. The three national governments established a cross-border commission in 2007 to investigate a suitable route, backed with 900,000 euros of European Union funding. It estimates the modern waterway could carry up to 6 million metric tons of cargo a year.
