Themis Kalpakidis, a farmer from the small seaside town of Kavala in northeast Greece, and Agim Bendo, owner of a small plum orchard in the village of Turan in eastern Albania, share a similar agenda – even though they live some 420 kilometres apart and do not know each other.
Both of them, alongside hundreds of other Greek and Albanian farmers and activists, are at the forefront of a movement determined to halt construction of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, known as TAP.
While farmers in Greece want to block the pipeline, in Albania, they are struggling for compensation for use of their land. But both camps share a feeling that the TAP will make tough lives even harder.
The pipeline, whose construction was announced in 2013, is supposed to transport natural gas from the Shah Deniz gas field in Azerbaijan, through Greece and Albania, and then under the Adriatic Sea to Italy.
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
