25/04/2006 - Floodwaters
have returned to central Europe, menacing towns,
villages and human lives. Swollen by heavy rain
and melting snow, the Danube River — Europe’s
second longest river behind the Volga — hit its
highest level in Romania in 111 years in April,
swamping ports and thousands of hectares of farmland.
In Bulgaria and Romania, the
floods come less than a year after having caused
enormous damage and even loss of life, serving
to underline man-made changes to the river’s floodplains.
Beside their natural flood control
function, floodplains have multiple values, such
as keeping high water quality by trapping sediments
and pollutants, providing habitats for plants
and animals, supporting sustainable tourism, forestry
and rich fisheries, and replenishing groundwater
tables.
But human interventions in the
floodplains of the Danube and its major tributaries
have led to a dramatic situation that is altering
the natural flow of the river. The long-term practice
of forcing water into a narrow corset and expediting
its run-off has failed. In order to provide natural
flood protection and restore the health of the
river, the Danube needs room. But, is it getting
the space it deserves?
Digging up the Delta
In May 2004, dredgers began chomping their way
through the core zone of the Danube Delta biosphere
reserve in Ukraine, one of the most valuable wetland
areas in the world, to make way for a massive
canal project.
Without public notice and in
violation of national and international environmental
law, the Ukrainian government, then under the
regime of President Leonid Kuchma, began dredging
a canal through the delta to allow large vessels
to travel directly between the Danube River and
the Black Sea. The government claimed that the
construction of the canal was important to reviving
the country’s depressed shipping industry in the
delta and a solution to the region’s unemployment
woes.
“The construction of the canal
would have a severe negative impact on both the
ecology and the socio-economic situation in the
delta,” said Michael Baltzer, director of WWF’s
Danube-Carpathian Programme. “The action by the
previous Ukrainian government demonstrated a serious
lack of commitment to international conventions
that Ukraine is signatory to and showed that the
government was prepared to renege on promises
made to protect the delta.”
Since its inception, the construction
of Bystroye Canal unleashed a fury of protests.
The EU Commission noted its strong disapproval,
while the secretariats of international environmental
conventions, including the Ramsar Convention on
Wetlands and the Bern Convention on the conservation
of European wildlife and natural habitats, agreed
that the decision went against international agreements.
Not least, the project was opposed
within Ukraine by a relatively small, but vociferous
and dedicated group of environmentalists, local
communities and civic activists, often at great
risk. In attempts to dissuade opposition, the
biosphere reserve’s administration gasoline supplies
were cut, making it difficult to patrol the delta
area, and was subjected to numerous tax and other
inspections. Employees were even threatened.
But that did not deter people
like Olya Melen, a young, but gritty environmental
lawyer, who fought against the canal in the courts,
unveiling the project’s shaky legal grounds. Working
with the Ukrainian-based Environment-People-Law
(EPL) organization, Melen filed lawsuits to prevent
the construction of the canal and filed complaints
with several international environmental conventions
to force the Ukrainian government to justify its
canal plans at a time when the country was seeking
acceptance to the European Union.
“As a public interest environmental
lawyer, my goal is to seek the rule of law to
preserve nature for present and future generations,”
said Melen who recently won the prestigious Goldman
Environmental prize for her work in the Danube
Delta, an area where WWF has long been concentrating
its conservation efforts.
In her first significant victory,
Melen proved that the environmental impact assessment
of the canal was inadequate. The judge ruled that
the canal development flouted environmental laws
and could adversely affect the Danube Delta’s
biodiversity.
“Olya really put her life on
the line. She represented the other side before
it became safe to do so,” said Baltzer. “She and
her colleagues and the other people that were
fighting against the canal really do symbolize
the whole spirit of the Orange Revolution.”
The Orange Revolution, a series
of protests and political events that took place
throughout Ukraine in response to allegations
of massive corruption and direct electoral fraud
during the 2004 presidential election, saw Viktor
Yushchenko sweep into. The change of government
has so far changed the situation in the Danube
Delta for the better. The dredging ships have
been sent back to port and the project was been
put on hold after the new Ukrainian Environment
Minister rejected plans for the second phase of
the proposed canal.
Despite these positive signs,
it is still unclear how and whether the project
will continue. In February, just weeks before
the national election and scarcely a week before
the start of an international conference on the
future of the Danube Delta, the Ukrainian government
announced that money had been set aside in the
2006 budget to finance the second phase of the
project to build the Bystroye Canal. Whether that
budget item will in fact be used is still uncertain.
Other threats
The Bystroye Canal is certainly the most dramatic,
but by no means the only long-term threat to the
future of the Danube Delta. A major oil terminal
is currently being built in the sliver of Moldovan
territory that reaches into the delta. Fears of
a potential oil spill are not far from many people’s
minds, especially with a long history of crises.
In 1999, the bombings of chemical factories and
other targets during the war in the ex-Yugoslavia
resulted in widespread toxic contamination of
the Danube River. In January 2000, some 100 tons
of highly toxic cyanide spilled into the Danube
from the Tisza River in Romania, following an
accident at a gold mining operation.
In addition, uncontrolled development
of tourism, residential and other infrastructure,
much of it illegal, is also fragmenting and encroaching
on the river’s exceptional natural areas. In the
Danube Delta in particular, poorly planned mass
tourism developments are gradually destroying
the very features that are the area’s greatest
attraction. And, draining wetlands along the river
for agriculture over the past several decades
has compounded the situation.
But, of all the factors that
have reduced the natural heritage of the Danube,
probably none is more significant than channelization.
Beginning in the early 1800s, flood protection
works and channelization for shipping, hydropower
and agriculture began to destroy the river’s natural
flow, creating a straighter and deeper channel.
Altogether, some 15,000-20,000 km2 of Danube floodplains
were cut off from the river by engineering works.
Today, less than 19 per cent of the former floodplains
in the Danube basin remain compared to the 19th
century.
Even the EU, which on the Bystroye
issue counts itself among the defenders of the
Danube Delta biosphere reserve, may be responsible
for promoting further such projects in the future.
According to the EU, the Danube is one of the
continent’s most important future transportation
arteries. Among the priority projects identified
by a high-level group to expedite transportation
across the continent are unplugging a series of
“blockages” on the river, including the entire
lower stretch of the river, including its delta.
Traditional approaches to inland
navigation, such as dyking and dredging, risk
turning the river into little more than a transport
corridor. Essentially, the river is being manipulated
to meet the needs of boats, and not the other
way around.
“There is still plenty of opportunity
to increase shipping without destroying more of
our natural wealth and ecosystem services,” said
Christine Bratrich, head of WWF’s Danube-Carpathian
freshwater programme.
“The most important step is
to begin fitting our boats to the rivers, not
our rivers to the boats. It is important that
the European Union uses the innovative technology
that is now available to ensure more sustainable
shipping on the Danube.”
Preserving the Delta
Securing the long-term future for the Danube Delta
will require a comprehensive approach to the protection
as well as sustainable development of the area.
Although the expansion of shipping on the Danube
and through the delta is inevitable as a result
of EU enlargement and globalization, its impact
on the local environment and communities can be
limited.
In particular, WWF is working
with shipping and ship building companies in Germany
and the Netherlands to identify innovative technologies
that can limit the need for expensive and destructive
dredging and related infrastructure. New kinds
of shallow-bottomed boats and propulsion systems
and navigation systems also hold the promise of
reducing damage to the river’s fragile ecology.
But the real success to saving
the river is restoring parts of the Danube’s floodplains
to its original glory.
“Floodplains are like natural
sponges, they act as natural storage reservoirs
allowing large volumes of water to be stored and
slowly and safely released down rivers and into
the groundwater,” said Orieta Hulea, coordinator
of the WWF Lower Danube Green Corridor Programme.
“If we destroy these areas,
by cutting them off from the main river beds and
draining them for agriculture as has happened
on the lower Danube and across most of Europe,
their potential for flood retention is lost and
the risk for major flooding increases.”
WWF is also working with the
local organizations and governments of Romania,
Bulgaria, Ukraine and Moldova to help realize
an integrated ecological network of healthy, restored
and protected wetlands covering some 600,000ha
along the lower Danube, as well as promote sustainable
socio-economic development in the area.
“We are trying to make the lower
Danube a living river again, by connecting it
to its natural flooding areas and wetlands,” Hulea
added. “This will help reduce the risk of major
flooding in areas with human settlements and offer
benefits both for local economies, including fisheries
and tourism.”
On Ukraine’s Tataru Island,
for example, WWF and its partners have begun restoring
a former wetland area and developing tourism infrastructure,
including bird viewing platforms, to promote tourism
as an attractive source for local incomes.
Tataru Island is part of a small
archipelago once well known as an important spawning
site for Danube fish and nesting site for birds.
However, some 40 years ago the island was dammed
to facilitate the establishment of poplar tree
plantations. With the change in water flow, the
island’s ecosystem deteriorated. The main objective
now is to restore the island’s ecosystem and adaptation
of local economic practices to those based on
nature.
“The future of the Danube Delta
very much hangs in the balance,” said WWF’s Michael
Baltzer. “When it comes to the delta’s long-term
protection, it will take a bold change of culture
and political will based on regional cooperation
and a common vision to see a sustainable river
system.”
* Andreas Beckmann is Deputy
Director of WWF’s Danube-Carpathian Programme.
END NOTES:
• The entire Danube Delta has
been selected by WWF as one of the world’s 200
most important regions for biodiversity conservation.
It is the second largest wetland in Europe and
the largest reedbed in the world. It is a critical
to a number of globally threatened species. It
is home to about 330 bird species, 70 per cent
of the world’s white pelican population and 60
per cent of the world’s pygmy cormorants. The
Delta is home to a remarkable population of glossy
ibis, spoonbill, different species of egrets and
herons. Most of the European freshwater fish species
(around 70 species) exist in the Delta.
• About 83 million people live
in the basin and more than 20 million people depend
directly on the Danube for drinking water – primarily
groundwater from domestic wells. The basin also
unifies and sustains a wealth of diverse cultures
and traditions.
• WWF’s Danube–Carpathian Programme
focuses primarily on freshwater and forest resource
conservation in the Danube River Basin and Carpathian
Mountains. The region between the Danube River
Basin and the Carpathian Mountains includes all
or part of Germany and Poland, Austria, Bosnia
& Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic,
Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia & Montenegro, Hungary,
Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova and Ukraine.
By Andreas Beckmann*
