The Neris River, flowing more than 500 km from Belarus into Lithuania, including its capital Vilnius, has always carried life. Now it is being asked to carry risk, fear, and responsibility for crises far beyond its banks. Protected under Natura 2000 yet lying beneath a nuclear shadow and drawn into military planning, the river is at risk of becoming a testing ground for how Europe treats its living systems in times of uncertainty. Can a river remain a habitat, a safeguard, and an escape route all at once – and what is lost when nature is quietly repurposed for security? By Olga Karach.
A river carrying more than water
Across Europe, loud and visible crises dominate headlines, while quieter transformations take place in the background with little public attention. One such transformation has been unfolding along the Neris River in Lithuania – known upstream in Belarus as the Viliya – where a river once valued for its ecological richness has gradually been assigned a set of roles it was never meant to carry. Today, this single river is expected to remain a protected habitat under Natura 2000, to serve as a buffer absorbing the risks of a neighbouring nuclear programme, and, remarkably, to act as a potential evacuation route for a European capital city Vilnius in times of war conflict. All of this is occurring while the river itself continues to function as one of the last migration corridors for wild Baltic salmon.
The contradiction is striking. Long before there were borders, ministries or strategic infrastructure plans, salmon travelled upstream along this river system, marking the seasons with their return. While other parts of the Nemunas basin have been dammed, blocked, and industrialised, the Neris remained free enough for this ancient journey to continue. The survival of the salmon is not a sentimental detail; it is a biological indicator that the river’s essential ecological rhythm is still intact.
The nuclear shadow upstream
Yet this same river now flows downstream of the Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant, located just across the border. Cooling systems rely on water drawn from the basin; spent fuel is stored in pools whose safety depends, ultimately, on the integrity of the same hydrological system. In parallel, plans for a permanent radioactive waste repository in the wider Viliya basin are moving ahead. The geography is brutally simple: if contamination ever reaches the river – whether through negligence, accident or miscalculation – it will not stop at the frontier. It will spread across the EU territory, through Vilnius and onward to the Baltic Sea, which is already one of the most environmentally stressed seas in the world.
This reality creates a continuous ambient anxiety. Nuclear risk does not usually manifest as spectacular catastrophe; it exists instead as a structural condition, a background presence that reshapes policy and public psychology even in times of apparent calm. In this sense, the Neris has become an unwitting witness to decisions taken elsewhere, under political systems beyond the control of the communities living downstream.
The alteration of the river due to military conflict
More recently, the river has acquired an additional layer of meaning. Lithuanian authorities have publicly discussed using the Neris as a possible evacuation route should military conflict intensify. On the surface, this may sound like a pragmatic response to growing insecurity. The river flows westward, away from the Belarusian border; boats could, in theory, carry people to safety. However, once the logistics are examined – travel times measured in days, winter conditions, the absence of adequate vessel capacity, and the basic impossibility of loading hundreds of thousands of people onto watercraft in a crisis – the idea begins to look less like a realistic emergency plan and more like a symbolic reassurance in an increasingly nervous Baltic State.
And symbols have consequences. To make such an evacuation even theoretically possible, the river would need to be altered: dredging sediments, removing rapids, straightening its course. These are precisely the kinds of interventions that damage or destroy spawning grounds, undermine biodiversity and erode the ecological character that Natura 2000 status is meant to protect. What begins as a gesture toward national security in Lithuania risks ending as an attack on the river itself.
Who pays the price?
This pattern is familiar. When crises escalate, environmental spaces are often the first to be reframed as assets, corridors or logistical platforms. Language shifts; ecosystems become “infrastructure”. From that point on, nature must justify its existence not on ecological or cultural grounds, but in competition with arguments about security, economic necessity or geopolitical realism. In such contests, rivers rarely win.
Yet the winners are difficult to identify. Nuclear installations do not make downstream communities feel safer. Altered landscapes do not build lasting confidence. Instead, uncertainty grows alongside the erosion of natural systems that provide clean water, livelihoods, climate resilience and cultural meaning. Meanwhile, the salmon – that quiet measure of whether a river remains alive – are pushed closer to disappearance.
Beyond the false choice
It is tempting to frame this situation as a conflict between human security and environmental protection. But that is a false choice. A society that undermines the ecological foundations of its own territory in the name of safety ultimately weakens itself. Real resilience is built on functioning ecosystems, transparent governance of transboundary risks, and respect for the limits of natural systems – not on the assumption that rivers can endlessly absorb whatever pressures politics decides to place upon them.
There is an alternative path. It begins by taking seriously the protected status of the Neris valley and recognising that Natura 2000 is not a decorative label, but a legal and moral commitment to safeguarding biodiversity. It continues by insisting that nuclear risk management – particularly in sensitive transboundary basins – must be subject to the highest levels of international scrutiny and accountability. And it requires acknowledging that transforming a living river into an evacuation corridor is neither realistic nor ethically defensible when it threatens to destroy the very ecosystem it relies upon.
A measure of who we are
What happens next along the Neris will say much about what kind of Europe we are becoming. Are rivers simply to be bent to the needs of power, fear and technological ambition? Or can they be recognised as living systems whose health and protection are inseparable from our own?
For now, the salmon still swim upstream, repeating a cycle older than any of our States or Treaties. Their persistence is not guaranteed. But it remains, for the moment, a quiet reminder that another relationship with the river is still possible – one in which security is not purchased at the expense of nature, but grounded in it.
This article was written by guest contributor Olga Karach (Our House Centre for Human Rights and Relief, Lithuania)
