Waterway E40

Waterway E40 is a planned navigable transport route that aims to connect the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea.

The length is approximately 2000 km. According to the project, the route runs from the city of Gdansk in Poland through the territory of the Republic of Belarus and to the city of Kherson in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian part of the E40 waterway will follow the riverbed of the Pripyat River through the Chernobyl exclusion zone and the river Dnieper to the city of Kherson and exit to the Black Sea. The total area of the regions through which the E40 is to pass is about 392,949 square kilometres (151,718 sq mi), with a population of 28,690,834.

Officially, the planning of the E40 waterway is still at an early stage, but in Ukraine, strategic documents are already being prepared and individual project parts are being implemented. In particular, in 2020, the Pripyat River was dredged within the exclusion zone.

The implementation of the E40 project has attracted considerable criticism from international and local public organizations in all three countries, as well as experts in the biological and environmental fields. The international campaign "STOP E40" against the implementation of the waterway project has been created".

According to experts of scientific institutions of the Republic of Belarus, the construction of the waterway will have a significant negative impact on the natural and cultural heritage of Polesia, on the well-being of the population of Polesia (1), as well as on the global carbon balance, hydrological and radiation situations, economy, transport development. There are alternative scenarios for the construction of the E40 for the development of Polesia and transport links between Ukraine, Poland and Belarus. First of all, it is about the reorientation of the Polesia region to the ecotourism industry. This was confirmed by a study conducted by Aivar Ruukel, a member of the board of the Global Ecotourism Network and a tour operator in the Soomaa National Park, Estonia.

The press has repeatedly stated that the E40 waterway is a restoration of an ancient transport route "from Varangians to the Greeks".