Resources at Risk
|
Archived Articles
Species on the Brink
Resources at Risk
Good News
Get Outdoors |
Navigation, Shipping Dangerous for the Danube By Zhanna Bilenko BUDAPEST, Hungary, September 2, 2002 (ENS) - The Third World Water Forum takes place in Japan from March 16 to 23, 2003. This forum aims to raise awareness of water issues among the general public, decision-makers, scientists and the mass media, and works to find sustainable solutions for world water problems. There are many such problems in the Danube region of Europe. In preparation for the Forum, the World Bank Institute and the Secretariat of the Third World Water Forum gathered international journalists for a workshop July 10 to 13 in Budapest, Hungary covering water management issues in the Danube region.
The Danube River Basin is the most international river basin in the world. It drains the lands of 17 countries and is home to 80 million people. "The Danube is one of the continent's great arteries, EU External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten said in a statement last year. "The restoration of navigation is of economic and commercial, environmental, cultural and political importance." Many governing bodies, including the European Commission, national governments bordering the Danube, and the Budapest based inter-governmental Danube Commission, are geared to re-launch and further expand navigation and shipping along the Danube that was stopped during the 78 day war in Yugoslavia. In November of last year, a channel was cleared of debris, and new shipping plans for the Danube River were elaborated. But conservation groups see increased shipping as a danger to the natural resources of the region. "The new projects are clearly the largest threat to the last few remaining natural areas in this part of Europe," said Philip Weller, director of WWF's Danube Carpathian Programme. The regional commitment to protect the Danube peaked in April 2001 with the WWF-organized Summit on Environment and Sustainable Development in the Carpathian and Danube Region held in Bucharest, Romania. A joint Declaration expressing support for rehabilitating the Danube was adopted there. High levels of pollution, particularly in the Danube Delta, is a big problem for the region. Untreated sewage goes into the river. The city of Budapest dumps about 70 percent of its wastewater directly into the Danube each year. The situation is similar in many other Danube countries. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, together with other international funders, has recently financed more than US$4 billion worth of wastewater treatment plants in region. Industrial waste increases the pollution. Many chemical and oil sites in Dancevo and the Novi Sad refinery in Yugoslavia were destroyed during the Kosovo conflict, causing further contamination.
In addition, in 1998, a German tanker leaked more than 1,500 tonnes of oil into the river to the west of Vienna, Austria. Some 20 million people in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe depend directly on the rivers and streams of the Danube Basin for clean drinking water. In Ukraine, the public water supply infrastructure and sewerage is centralized under the control of the municipally owned enterprise Vodokanal. Almost half the water in the surface water systems is poorly treated. Surface water is often polluted. Ukraine needs a serious national water treatment program. But Ukraine is not among the future members of the European Union, the candidate countries that must meet EU environmental targets before they can become members of bloc. Poland is seeking EU membership, and it is having trouble meeting the stringent compliance targets. Polish officials estimate that US$6 billion will have to spent on upgrading the water and wastewater systems in order to meet EU regulations. A new sewage treatment plant planned for the south of Warsaw on the left bank of the Danube can change the situation the better. Slovakia, another candidate country, needs to invest US$1.33 billion in its water sector over the next four years. This money is necessary to complete unfinished projects of sewerage systems and waste water treatment devices, building infrastructure, renewing water system technology. "We have some obstacles for entering the EU," Danka Thalmeinerova, head of the environmental policy program of Academia Nova Slovakia told the journalists at their workshop in Budapest. She listed the problems as the need for "hard investment in the environmental field," the practice of ignoring ecology issues on state levels, and the lack of private investment for the solution of environmental problems. Janusz Kindler, a teacher from Poland's Warsaw University of Technology says, "Water governance is concerned with systems that are in place to regulate the development and management of water resources and provision of water services at different levels of society. Effective water governance exists where agency of government allocate and manage water resources based on legitimate policies, laws and efficient administration." According to Tracey Osborne from the World Bank Institute, new water media networks encouraged by Secretariat of the Third World Water Forum, the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the World Bank Institute, will promote dialogue among journalists and advance the coverage of water issues. "This network engages journalists in the process of reform to quicken dialogue on the many issues connected with the provision of water supply and sanitation services - governance, equity, pricing, regulation and protection of resources - so that they can better assess the costs and benefits of different policies," Osborne told journalists in Budapest. "This workshop on water issues in the Danube Region was one of our initiatives in the water media network," she said. Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All rights reserved. |
Danube River in Austria (Photo courtesy 
Damaged bridge at Novi Sad (Photo courtesy 