The Line of the horizon, law and knowledge
There is a line in the horizon that dissolves in between the sky and the earth and which extends in the directions of infinity. Its colour is as indefinable as the boundary of the space joined by its collision.
This line can be between seas, mountains or between fields and the sky.
There is one other line, that of lakes and rivers, which throughout millions of years have provided the existence of human beings with inexhaustible generosity. This line is yet another fusion of colours between blue and green to create life.
There are also some lines, small and therefore stored in the pockets of the time when human beings found their first refuge — in caves.
The next lines that man began to understand were those of his hands, with which he left more and more traces in time and space.
From primitive hunting to nuclear power plants, human footprints irreversibly marked the earth, until the day came when roads and telecommunications lines, as aggressive as metastases, threatened the lines of grass in the mountains.
Sometime in the middle of all this, human beings summoned the line of law to save parts of the visible line of nature — the Protected Areas — from the attack of invisible dots of carbon dioxide and other poisons that they themselves continue to throw in the land, air and water.
But these lines of law defining the boundaries of some 200,000 Protected Areas worldwide, consisting of an infinite number of dots, need to be recognized and then respected.
Especially in Albania, a country where 25 years ago vineyards were cut off for political outrage, while forests are currently being burned for pasture, centuries-old stalactites are being plundered to decorate restaurants and the rivers’ momentum is being forced to flow on a power line towards factories in neighbouring countries, which export labelled water back to us.
This awareness on the Protected Areas will be modestly be carried out by VIJA (LINE) Journal through its running timeframe.
With a particular focus on the four northern counties: Shkodra, Lezha, Kukes and Dibra, VIJA will offer and seek cooperation with all actors and factors of environmental protection, to inform and orient the public towards a culture friendly to all the lines of nature that enable human life. (Editorial of VIJA Journal, issue no. 1, published by GO2 NGO, October 2016)
