COASTAL EROSION TRIGGERED BY POLITICAL AND SOCIO-ECONOMICAL ABRUPT CHANGES: THE CASE OF LALZIT BAY, ALBANIA

Abstract

Countries that undergo abrupt changes in their political regimes, such as the transition from totalitarianism to systems based on democratic principles, experience socio-economic changes that may also have a direct impact on the trans- formation and the anthropic pressure applied to the environment. This can ranges from the scale of small communities to larger spatial scales, such as that of a catchment basin. The rise of a liberal society in countries such as the Eastern European nations, often lacks a structure capable of regulating and planning the development of the territory and the use of natural resources, which should be aimed at conciliating the new development needs with the sustainable man- agement of the environment. This paper describes and analyses the extensive coastal erosion that has taken place over the past thirty years in Lalzit Bay, Albania, which may be attributed to the great social and economic transformations that occurred in the country after the fall of Enver Hoxa’s communist regime in 1991, and the consequent changes in land use. These led to a significant reduction in the volume of sediment carried by rivers, which was necessary for the morphological equilibrium of the coast and its natural replenishment.