5 ms·

The race to save Polesia, Europe's Amazon

91 points by jxub 7y ago

pintxo 7y ago
What’s the purpose to compare a waterway hundreds of km long and comprised of 5 rivers and various channels to the Panama and Suez channel? This is so misleading.
- al_chemist 7y ago
  It's a shortcut just like Panama and Suez channel. It changes travel time from around few weeks to few days. Panama channel allows you to not to go around America. Suez channel allows you to not to go around Africa. This shortcut allows you to not to go around Europe.
  - mkl 7y ago
    Yes, but most of the new route showed on those maps is existing rivers, so it's not comparable at all as presented.
leftyted 7y ago
Is this region comparatively unspoilt because of the Chernobyl disaster? If so, that's a strange kind of irony.
- myth_drannon 7y ago
  No, it's because it is mostly swamps. Totally unsuitable for agriculture.
  - contingencies 7y ago
    Agriculture is not the only thing humans do or settle for. Swamps are historically heavily inhabited by and sometimes even purposefully extended by humans specifically due to endemic biodiversity and ease of hunting and gathering. Also, sometimes because they offer fertile soils or refuge from other humans, and the waterways a strong source of orientation, food, and an artery for transport, trade and taxation. Examples off the top of my head: Bangladesh, Holland, Venice, Hanoi, Bangkok, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Angkor, Amazon, Sepik River of PNG...
    - oska 7y ago
      Virtually all your examples are seaside marshes, not low-lying inland swamps. But your example of Angkor is a good example of a low-lying inland swampy area and, while for a period of history it was a productive, heavily populated area it then experienced a population crash which has extended through to the present day.
      - zisermann 7y ago
        I’d add Tenochtitlan which is Mexico now. It was a swamp surrounded by mountains 500 years ago. Densely populated.
      - contingencies 7y ago
        So let's look purely at Hanoi, Hangzhou and Angkor as the subset that matches your requested scope. I still think it's fair to point out that they are all enormously successful areas.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
    Not entirely true, see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreew%C3%A4lder_Gurken https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreew%C3%A4lder_Gurken from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreewald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreewald for example. Similar landscapes. I'd guess swampy isn't that bad if you channel it a little, to have some more dry islands. edit: Cranberries!
- ajuc 7y ago
  It's swamps and forests sitting between 3 countries that went 3 different geopolitic ways (Belarus joined Russia, Poland joined EU and Ukraine tried to alance between the two). If you want to move goods from Ukraine to Poland - going through Belarus forces you to pay entry tariffs to CIS (Russia economic union) AND entry tariffs to EU. And dealing with lots of paperwork. Makes zero sense so all trade goes directly Poland->Ukraine through land south from there. There's no industry, almost no trade, population is sparse, and even farming isn't very profitable there. And for some weird reason it's not even that well known by tourists. Region influenced by Chernobyl is just a small part and it wasn't the root cause anyway.
- ouid 7y ago
  The Chernobyl exclusion zone has greater biodiversity than it did before the disaster. Humans are worse for the environment than concentrated radioactive fallout. If you are a billionaire and you want to make a wildlife preserve with your billions, just buy some dirty bombs.
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    More or less the theme behind Hugh Howey's 'Silo' series.
epicureanideal 7y ago
It seems like the project would be very useful. I wonder what the environmental benefits would be of reducing the distance ships need to travel from AROUND Europe to through the E40 route? Might it outweigh whatever environmental costs there are?
- petre 7y ago
  Not quite if you consider geopolitical landscape.
joejerryronnie 7y ago
Is it telling that I assumed this article was about a struggling European ecommerce conglomerate?
myth_drannon 7y ago
It's strange but when I think about Poles'e I think about 'Come and See' movie and the swamp scene https://youtu.be/Y60mnxzSD1Y?t=2992 https://youtu.be/Y60mnxzSD1Y?t=2992
yread 7y ago
There is a project with similar aim: the Danube-Oder-Elbe canal. It would connect Black, Baltic and North Seas: http://www.d-o-l.cz/index.php/en/about-d-o-e-project/current-situation http://www.d-o-l.cz/index.php/en/about-d-o-e-project/current...
ajuc 7y ago
Nice to sea Polesie on hackernews, even if for such reasons. My grandparents lived there (in the Polish part near Włodawa), I spent every holidays in 90s and 00s swimming in these lakes and biking through these forests. It's a very pretty region, great for tourism (the default is forest, there are clearings with lakes every few dozen kilometers, there's also some villages and farming land, but mostly it's one huge forest). It's very flat, and the roads (except the one that connects Lublin to Włodawa and the country border) are almost always empty - so it's a paradise for biking. The villages are very poor even for eastern Poland standards, most young people leave cause there's no jobs except for farming and some tourism in the summer but still not much. I'd say the median age is over 40 in the countryside or possibly more. My grandfather was working for a local farming cooperative there during communism, and they tried to dry the swamps for agriculture reasons. They were also searching for coal (there's a coal mine in the region and there is a possibility for some more). The end result was that in that particular part (near Stary Brus - Kołacze - Hańsk) it got much too dry, the ground water level dropped and it's almost a desert now - ground is mostly sand, only pine trees and a few kinds of grass grow there. In the Polish part there is already an artificial lake (Wytyczno) and a channel between some rivers (Wieprz-Krzna), but nobody really uses it for transport. I don't think it makes much sense to build waterways there at the cost of nature. - there's no industry to speak of - the population is sparse and poor - the border between Poland and Belarus on the Bug river is the external border of the EU, it separates 2 opposing economic unions and blocks almost all the trade - the next part downstream (Mazury lake district) is also underdeveloped sparsely populated countryside with little money and lots of rare nature If Poland, Ukraine and Belarus joined one economic union (preferably EU) - it could maybe work, but as is it's useless investment with lots of harmful side effects.
- mongol 7y ago
  You mention it is great for tourism. I am intrigued. As a tourist, how would I best get around in this area (longer distances), if I would not be cycling? Rental car?
  - ajuc 7y ago
    If you want to travel fast you need a car there, yes. Public transport only works well along the few main roads, outside of that it's like 2-3 buses a day or none at all. In any case traveling fast kinda misses the point, the fun stuff is in between. If you don't want to bike you can rent a kayak and go down one of the rivers. IMHO the best way is to get a tent and a bike, take a train to some city (Włodawa works), and bike for a week or two camping elsewhere each day. Best time is June - late enough that there's lots of cheap fresh fruits everywhere (you can buy them from farmers along the roads or just gather the wild fruits in the forests), but before the school ends so even the popular lakes are empty. Also there's that https://greenvelo.pl/en/map https://greenvelo.pl/en/map a bike-only road that goes for over 500 km through most of the tourist spots in the Polish parts of Polesie (and also later Warmia and Mazury). Less wild but still cool. Easy flat terrain starts north of Chełm and continues all the way to the Baltic sea, BTW choosing a smiling scenic mask icon for museums wasn't the best choice on that map, especially when you have a museum of a german death camp there :/
jungletime 7y ago
I highly recommend buying a kayak to kayak through one of the swamp areas in your region on a nice spring or summer day. Its really an experience for the soul! Even in a cooler/cold climate, the amount of noise from birds chirping really does make it seem like you're in the amazon. A total sensory experience worth having. You can get a kayak for $300.
- swiley 7y ago
  And the noise from the bugs. The bugs and frogs in the south US are incredibly loud. Plus bugs are pretty dangerous, and on the water here you have snakes. Idk I grew up next to the James river and it would take something incredible to make me go back there.
  - Razengan 7y ago
    Humans are more dangerous and make the most noise, I'd gladly brave bugs and snakes to get away from them for a while.
dntbnmpls 7y ago
Wish the title had "Rainforest" because the current title makes it seem like Polesia is a european competitor to Bezo's Amazon that is struggling to survive. Also, isn't calling Polesia, Europe's Amazon as silly as calling Thames, England's Nile? The amazon rainforest is almost the size of europe itself.
- mongol 7y ago
  It is used to evoke an understanding of how "wild" it is. It is probably not that accurate but I don't think it is silly, it made me curious and after reading the article I learned something new.
- zoomablemind 7y ago
  Took me a while to make sense out of the title. It's a confusing analogy, Amazon is river, Paliessie is mostly forests, bogs, with a number of rivers. I understand the biodiversity context, but even changing the title to spell Amazonas (it's a salad of meanings anyways) would make it less ambiguous, perhaps more exotic.
akhodakivskiy 7y ago
To me this sound like a crappy piece of propaganda. This project is in the national interest of Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine. They would profit from this route, obviously. The underdeveloped region would get a nice boost. The project is also against national interests of so many other countries that profit from lack of such route, many in the EU, notoriously Russia, and many others. The caption “colorfully painted log cabin” under a photo of a dissolving uninhabitable shack is priceless. Really makes me want to protect the region from evil humans.
bobthechef 7y ago
The article does feel a bit like propaganda. Environmental groups are notorious in the region for being used as political instruments to halt all manner of construction. When a new road is to be built, you’ll have environmental agitators coming out of the woodwork claiming that the road would cross a newly discovered frog habitat and that it would lead to the deaths of many frogs trying to cross the road. Never mind that there are ways to manage even those situations. The important thing is to weigh the human benefits against the overall negative impacts of a project. Environmental extremism generally smacks of foreign interests trying to keep the status quo and the region from flourishing economically and thus competing with them, or at least making things economically inconvenient. There is quite a history of such self-serving foreign meddling that involves patronizing appeals to all manner of fashionable sentiment, hence my skepticism.

91 points by jxub 7y ago

What’s the purpose to compare a waterway hundreds of km long and comprised of 5 rivers and various channels to the Panama and Suez channel? This is so misleading.

al_chemist 7y ago
It's a shortcut just like Panama and Suez channel. It changes travel time from around few weeks to few days. Panama channel allows you to not to go around America. Suez channel allows you to not to go around Africa. This shortcut allows you to not to go around Europe.
- mkl 7y ago
  Yes, but most of the new route showed on those maps is existing rivers, so it's not comparable at all as presented.

leftyted 7y ago

Is this region comparatively unspoilt because of the Chernobyl disaster? If so, that's a strange kind of irony.

myth_drannon 7y ago
No, it's because it is mostly swamps. Totally unsuitable for agriculture.
- contingencies 7y ago
  Agriculture is not the only thing humans do or settle for. Swamps are historically heavily inhabited by and sometimes even purposefully extended by humans specifically due to endemic biodiversity and ease of hunting and gathering. Also, sometimes because they offer fertile soils or refuge from other humans, and the waterways a strong source of orientation, food, and an artery for transport, trade and taxation. Examples off the top of my head: Bangladesh, Holland, Venice, Hanoi, Bangkok, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Angkor, Amazon, Sepik River of PNG...
  - oska 7y ago
    Virtually all your examples are seaside marshes, not low-lying inland swamps. But your example of Angkor is a good example of a low-lying inland swampy area and, while for a period of history it was a productive, heavily populated area it then experienced a population crash which has extended through to the present day.
    - zisermann 7y ago
      I’d add Tenochtitlan which is Mexico now. It was a swamp surrounded by mountains 500 years ago. Densely populated.
    - contingencies 7y ago
      So let's look purely at Hanoi, Hangzhou and Angkor as the subset that matches your requested scope. I still think it's fair to point out that they are all enormously successful areas.
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
  Not entirely true, see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreew%C3%A4lder_Gurken https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreew%C3%A4lder_Gurken from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreewald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreewald for example. Similar landscapes. I'd guess swampy isn't that bad if you channel it a little, to have some more dry islands. edit: Cranberries!
ajuc 7y ago
It's swamps and forests sitting between 3 countries that went 3 different geopolitic ways (Belarus joined Russia, Poland joined EU and Ukraine tried to alance between the two). If you want to move goods from Ukraine to Poland - going through Belarus forces you to pay entry tariffs to CIS (Russia economic union) AND entry tariffs to EU. And dealing with lots of paperwork. Makes zero sense so all trade goes directly Poland->Ukraine through land south from there. There's no industry, almost no trade, population is sparse, and even farming isn't very profitable there. And for some weird reason it's not even that well known by tourists. Region influenced by Chernobyl is just a small part and it wasn't the root cause anyway.
ouid 7y ago
The Chernobyl exclusion zone has greater biodiversity than it did before the disaster. Humans are worse for the environment than concentrated radioactive fallout. If you are a billionaire and you want to make a wildlife preserve with your billions, just buy some dirty bombs.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  More or less the theme behind Hugh Howey's 'Silo' series.

epicureanideal 7y ago

It seems like the project would be very useful. I wonder what the environmental benefits would be of reducing the distance ships need to travel from AROUND Europe to through the E40 route? Might it outweigh whatever environmental costs there are?

petre 7y ago
Not quite if you consider geopolitical landscape.

joejerryronnie 7y ago

Is it telling that I assumed this article was about a struggling European ecommerce conglomerate?

myth_drannon 7y ago

It's strange but when I think about Poles'e I think about 'Come and See' movie and the swamp scene https://youtu.be/Y60mnxzSD1Y?t=2992 https://youtu.be/Y60mnxzSD1Y?t=2992

yread 7y ago

There is a project with similar aim: the Danube-Oder-Elbe canal. It would connect Black, Baltic and North Seas: http://www.d-o-l.cz/index.php/en/about-d-o-e-project/current-situation http://www.d-o-l.cz/index.php/en/about-d-o-e-project/current...

ajuc 7y ago

Nice to sea Polesie on hackernews, even if for such reasons. My grandparents lived there (in the Polish part near Włodawa), I spent every holidays in 90s and 00s swimming in these lakes and biking through these forests. It's a very pretty region, great for tourism (the default is forest, there are clearings with lakes every few dozen kilometers, there's also some villages and farming land, but mostly it's one huge forest). It's very flat, and the roads (except the one that connects Lublin to Włodawa and the country border) are almost always empty - so it's a paradise for biking. The villages are very poor even for eastern Poland standards, most young people leave cause there's no jobs except for farming and some tourism in the summer but still not much. I'd say the median age is over 40 in the countryside or possibly more. My grandfather was working for a local farming cooperative there during communism, and they tried to dry the swamps for agriculture reasons. They were also searching for coal (there's a coal mine in the region and there is a possibility for some more). The end result was that in that particular part (near Stary Brus - Kołacze - Hańsk) it got much too dry, the ground water level dropped and it's almost a desert now - ground is mostly sand, only pine trees and a few kinds of grass grow there. In the Polish part there is already an artificial lake (Wytyczno) and a channel between some rivers (Wieprz-Krzna), but nobody really uses it for transport. I don't think it makes much sense to build waterways there at the cost of nature. - there's no industry to speak of - the population is sparse and poor - the border between Poland and Belarus on the Bug river is the external border of the EU, it separates 2 opposing economic unions and blocks almost all the trade - the next part downstream (Mazury lake district) is also underdeveloped sparsely populated countryside with little money and lots of rare nature If Poland, Ukraine and Belarus joined one economic union (preferably EU) - it could maybe work, but as is it's useless investment with lots of harmful side effects.

mongol 7y ago
You mention it is great for tourism. I am intrigued. As a tourist, how would I best get around in this area (longer distances), if I would not be cycling? Rental car?
- ajuc 7y ago
  If you want to travel fast you need a car there, yes. Public transport only works well along the few main roads, outside of that it's like 2-3 buses a day or none at all. In any case traveling fast kinda misses the point, the fun stuff is in between. If you don't want to bike you can rent a kayak and go down one of the rivers. IMHO the best way is to get a tent and a bike, take a train to some city (Włodawa works), and bike for a week or two camping elsewhere each day. Best time is June - late enough that there's lots of cheap fresh fruits everywhere (you can buy them from farmers along the roads or just gather the wild fruits in the forests), but before the school ends so even the popular lakes are empty. Also there's that https://greenvelo.pl/en/map https://greenvelo.pl/en/map a bike-only road that goes for over 500 km through most of the tourist spots in the Polish parts of Polesie (and also later Warmia and Mazury). Less wild but still cool. Easy flat terrain starts north of Chełm and continues all the way to the Baltic sea, BTW choosing a smiling scenic mask icon for museums wasn't the best choice on that map, especially when you have a museum of a german death camp there :/

jungletime 7y ago

I highly recommend buying a kayak to kayak through one of the swamp areas in your region on a nice spring or summer day. Its really an experience for the soul! Even in a cooler/cold climate, the amount of noise from birds chirping really does make it seem like you're in the amazon. A total sensory experience worth having. You can get a kayak for $300.

swiley 7y ago
And the noise from the bugs. The bugs and frogs in the south US are incredibly loud. Plus bugs are pretty dangerous, and on the water here you have snakes. Idk I grew up next to the James river and it would take something incredible to make me go back there.
- Razengan 7y ago
  Humans are more dangerous and make the most noise, I'd gladly brave bugs and snakes to get away from them for a while.

dntbnmpls 7y ago

Wish the title had "Rainforest" because the current title makes it seem like Polesia is a european competitor to Bezo's Amazon that is struggling to survive. Also, isn't calling Polesia, Europe's Amazon as silly as calling Thames, England's Nile? The amazon rainforest is almost the size of europe itself.

mongol 7y ago
It is used to evoke an understanding of how "wild" it is. It is probably not that accurate but I don't think it is silly, it made me curious and after reading the article I learned something new.
zoomablemind 7y ago
Took me a while to make sense out of the title. It's a confusing analogy, Amazon is river, Paliessie is mostly forests, bogs, with a number of rivers. I understand the biodiversity context, but even changing the title to spell Amazonas (it's a salad of meanings anyways) would make it less ambiguous, perhaps more exotic.

akhodakivskiy 7y ago

To me this sound like a crappy piece of propaganda. This project is in the national interest of Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine. They would profit from this route, obviously. The underdeveloped region would get a nice boost. The project is also against national interests of so many other countries that profit from lack of such route, many in the EU, notoriously Russia, and many others. The caption “colorfully painted log cabin” under a photo of a dissolving uninhabitable shack is priceless. Really makes me want to protect the region from evil humans.

bobthechef 7y ago

The article does feel a bit like propaganda. Environmental groups are notorious in the region for being used as political instruments to halt all manner of construction. When a new road is to be built, you’ll have environmental agitators coming out of the woodwork claiming that the road would cross a newly discovered frog habitat and that it would lead to the deaths of many frogs trying to cross the road. Never mind that there are ways to manage even those situations. The important thing is to weigh the human benefits against the overall negative impacts of a project. Environmental extremism generally smacks of foreign interests trying to keep the status quo and the region from flourishing economically and thus competing with them, or at least making things economically inconvenient. There is quite a history of such self-serving foreign meddling that involves patronizing appeals to all manner of fashionable sentiment, hence my skepticism.