Dimitar Pendoski marches to the end of a rickety walkway, skips around sunbathing youngsters, and sweeps back a tarpaulin protecting his empty lakeside restaurant, recently closed by officials under pressure from UNESCO. North Macedonia’s government is scrambling to enforce environmental protection rules and shut down places like Pendoski’s self-built restaurant, to save Lake Ohrid from being placed on the UN culture agency’s list of endangered world heritage sites. “This way, everybody loses—the employees, the local economy, and of course the tourists because they have no place to go on the beach,” Pendoski tells AFP, a point hotly contested by environmentalists.

'Gone to hell': The battle to save Europe's oldest lake. (2021, July 4). Manila Standard, p. 4B.