A 219 ha development Black Sea Gardens at Karadere beach, in north-east Bulgaria, “spearheaded by the British architect Sir Norman Foster, has enraged Bulgaria's growing band of ecologists,” UK newspaper Guardian reported on July 14.
According to the environmentalists, the development, which is to become Bulgaria's first carbon-neutral and self-sustaining resort thanks to biomass power, would destroy the last virgin beaches at the Black Sea coast and would have devastating impact of the biodiversity in the region. The area was included in the European environment network Natura 2000.
Bulgarian authorities failed to enact regulations for extensive developments in such areas, which created few hindrances for the developing costal construction, the newspaper said. As a result, few parts of Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast are still not constructed.
Black Sea Gardens construction’s launching was scheduled for 2009 and would host 15 000 inhabitants. The first of the five villages was funded by a British-Bulgarian investment group and US, Russian and Saudi Arabian investors were interested in the other villages in the resort, The Guardian said.
The project's detractors, quoted by the newspaper, said that the resort might have been of a higher standard than the usual construction at the coast, but the "sheer scale of the resort will do lasting damage to the natural habitat." The resort would enter untouched oak forests and would disturb one of Europe's major migratory routes for millions of birds.
The Guardian quoted Todor Karastoyanov, a musician and protester against the project, as saying “I ask myself whether Norman Foster really knows what he's getting himself in to. […] We want to try to stop him from making the biggest mistake of his career by building here, because it's immoral and he might not know that.”
Biliana Voutchkova, a concert violinist holidaying on Karadere beach said that the place would “be lost forever and we'll only realise the consequences once it's too late.”
According to the ornithologist Dimitar Georgiev, the habitats of numerous species like otters, butterflies and woodpeckers, among others, would be “directly disturbed and destroyed by this construction. […] We know from experience that these species don't move elsewhere, they just disappear,” he was quoted as saying.
“We're not against mass tourism but it should be planned in a proper way, with areas set aside for wildlife to breed. But the problem is so much of the coastal areas have been developed, there's now hardly any space left, which means the ecosystem's resilience is greatly weakened, so any new site does not have the moral right to call itself 'eco',” Georgiev said.
Georgi Stanishev, director of Foster's partner Projects Ltd., who is the older brother of Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev, insisted that Black Sea Gardens was environmentally save and completely legal. “What we as the Bulgarian team of architects and Foster and Partners are doing is absolutely adequate to the legislation and the laws of this country,” he said. Foster and Partners did not provide anyone to talk to the newspaper, The Guardian said.
