18 Apr 2006 - Vienna/Bucharest/Sofia
– Floodwaters have returned to Bulgaria and Romania,
menacing towns, villages and human lives. Human
interventions in the floodplains of the Danube
River and its major tributaries have led to a
dramatic situation in downstream areas of the
Danube. Long-term solutions for flood management
are required that work with nature, not against
it, by giving space back to the rivers.
As an important step in this direction, WWF urges
the Governments of Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine
and Moldova to put into practice the solutions
agreed by them in 2000 in the “Declaration on
the co-operation for the creation of the Lower
Danube Green Corridor”.
“Facilitated by WWF, the agreement
to establish the Lower Danube Green Corridor aims
to make the Lower Danube a living river again,
connected to its natural flooding areas and wetlands,
reducing the risk of major flooding in areas with
human settlements and offering benefits both for
local economies - fisheries, tourism - and for
protected areas along the river” said Orieta Hulea,
Coordinator of the WWF Lower Danube Green Corridor
Programme.
”The mechanism is simple: the 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. 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 as across most
of Europe, their potential for flood retention
is lost and the risk for major flooding increases,
as we have experienced in the last couple of years.
”
In 2000, the Lower Danube countries
committed to restore 223,608 ha of the former
floodplain areas, in the framework of the Lower
Danube Green Corridor Agreement. Only 6% of this
commitment has been accomplished to date, and
the largest wetland areas that have been converted
to agricultural polders are still waiting to be
reconnected to the river, including those at Potelu,
Belene, Seaca- Suhaia – Zimnicea, Gostinu- Prundu
– Greaca, Kalimok – Tutrakan, Pardina, Sireasa.
The recent controlled flooding in selected areas
undertaken by the Romanian Government has been
a step forward toward this approach and underlines
that giving more space to the river is crucial
for reducing floodwater pressure on human settlements
e.g. at Rousse, Calarasi, Silistra, Harsova, and
Fetesti. It is important to keep these flooded
areas as water retention zones in future and thus
reduce the risk from future floods.
Still, an integrated and more
transparent flood management approach is needed
to stop the dangerous cycle of permitting farming
or industrial activities in high risk flood areas,
like floodplains, and then building higher and
higher dykes to protect them. All economic, ecological
and human factors must be considered and actions
must be taken to provide long-term solutions,
by reconnecting the rivers to their floodplains
in the former wetland areas.
Beside their 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 through periodic
natural flooding. 80% of the Danube River wetlands
have been lost over the past two hundred years,
due to human interventions.
Notes to editors:
• The former Greaca wetland
from the Danube floodplain was drained into an
agriculture polder in 1964 - 1966. 27.830 hectares
of floodplain were lost. The area has been proposed
and committed to be restored to its natural functions
in the Lower Danube Green Corridor Declaration.
Map of Greaca before drainage (1920) and nowadays
(2004) attached.
• From a ten-year comparative study of the world’s
great flood disasters from 1950 – 1998 by the
German Insurance company, Munich Reinsurance,
the number of global flood events increased threefold:
1950 – 1979 – 7/9 major floods per decade; 1980
– 1989 – 20 major floods; 1989 – 1998 – 34 major
floods. For more information, see “Floods Trends
and Global Change” report, by Thomas Loster( 1999)
• For over a decade WWF has been working to restore
the floodplains of the Lower Danube and its tributaries
in Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine and Moldova, thus
contributing to the practical implementation of
the Lower Danube Green Corridor Agreement signed
by the governments of Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova
and Ukraine in 2000.
