Ohrid ECO 2026 isn't a routine environmental stunt for the camera. This weekend, 80 divers from Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina gathered at Gradište Autocamp and went out to do work that all the environment ministries together don't manage to do - cleaning the bottom of Lake Ohrid. And they did it.

The action was organised by the „Amfora" Diving Centre with help from regional partners. The result - a large amount of waste pulled from the bottom of one of Europe's oldest lakes. From plastic, to car parts, to fishing nets. Anything a tourist, a fisherman or a careless driver could throw in the water over the past 30 years - shows up now, when divers go over it with masks and equipment.

„Amfora" isn't doing this for the first time. Similar actions are organised every year, but this year's scale is the biggest. 80 divers from 4 countries - that's the type of regional cooperation politicians praise in speeches but don't build in practice. This time, people from across disputed borders showed that for shared heritage you can still work together. That's not a small thing.

For Lake Ohrid, this is urgent work. UNESCO has warned more than once that its status as a „world natural and cultural heritage" site could be revised if the neglect continues. The municipalities around the lake - on both the Macedonian and the Albanian sides - fail to control the number of structures, the waste, the fishing. And while the institutions don't budge, volunteers pick up masks and go underwater.

The question that stays open for readers is - why volunteers? Why do 80 people from 4 countries have to pay for their own gear and spend a weekend underwater to do what the institutions have the budget, the teams and the duty to do? That's a question whose answer isn't in environmental analysis. It's in the question of how the state - on every side of the lake - works, or doesn't.