Good news ahead of the peak summer season: the water in Lake Ohrid is safe for swimming. Physical and chemical analyses at eleven measuring points found that at eight of them the water is first class, and at two it's second class - which is also permitted for swimming under the legal norms.

The results come at a moment when the lake is under pressure from unusually hot weather. The water is warming faster than usual, which for the oldest and deepest lake in the Balkans is no trivial detail - temperature changes affect its whole fragile ecosystem, and Lake Ohrid has for centuries been home to species that live nowhere else.

Tourists can breathe easy, but monitoring isn't decoration. It exists precisely because a lake like this is easy to lose and hard to bring back. Regular analyses are the only way to catch a risk in time before it becomes a disaster - and amid climate change that is altering the quality of surface waters across Macedonia, this isn't a question for this season alone.

The question left behind the good numbers is whether we are looking after what we have as we should. Clean swimming water today doesn't mean the lake is safe forever - it only means the analyses came back good this time. Caring for Ohrid has to be constant, not a seasonal announcement made before the tourists arrive.