From breach to bridge: the Augustów canal, an ecotourism destination across the EU’s border with Belarus

• Main Author: Anaïs Marin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Journal of Urban Research 2011-03-01
• Series: Articulo: Journal of Urban Research
• Subjects: cross-border cooperation; trans-boundary water management; ecotourism; European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP); Eastern Partnership; Euroregion Neman
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/articulo/1705

Ecotourism has become a driver for cooperation across the EU’s Eastern borders. This holds true even in the case of such reluctant a partner as Belarus. In studying the resumption of navigation on the Augustów canal – a 180 year old waterway connecting the Vistula and Neman river basins across the Polish-Belarusian border – this paper illustrates how in “alienated” borderlands projects that develop alternative forms of tourism can foster cross-border cooperation. Shared concern for the preservation of the borderland’s natural and cultural heritage enabled a “bridging” of neighbourhood relations and bred trans-boundary region-building initiatives (Euroregion Neman). A multi-scalar screening of how the Augustów canal area is being promoted as a tourism attraction in Belarus reveals the emergence of horizontal cooperation across the border. Despite geopolitical obstacles, this network governance model empowers the local stakeholders and actors of the embryonic Belarusian civil society, thus favouring their gradual socialisation in Europe.