By IPS Correspondents
BUCHAREST, Jun 17 2004 (IPS)

About 2,400 km from where it originates in Donaueschingen in the Black Forest, the Danube spreads out into a broad delta as it flows into the Black Sea.

The Danube Delta is home to about 5,140 species of flora and fauna, including 300 species of birds and 30 of fish. The area is serene, full of canals, lakes and wetlands, and in the summer vacationers camp across the delta.

The ecologically sensitive delta is now under threat as Ukraine to the east of Romania begins construction of a controversial shipping canal that could cause significant environmental destruction.

The proposed canal to be built on the northern arm of the Danube in the delta would be 163 km long and cross an ecosystem with high biodiversity and natural resources. The Danube delta has three natural canals, but Ukraine has access to only one of them. It has therefore decided to build a new one.

Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase wrote to his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yanukovych last week to say that construction of the planned Bistroe (Bystraya) canal would harm the regional ecosystem.

“Romania and independent environmental experts are concerned about this plan as it started last month without any preliminary talks,” Nastase wrote. “Therefore the two countries should settle any dispute in bilateral discussion, by open and constructive dialogue.”

Romania had appealed to the secretariat of the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural habits (the Bern Convention) to protest Ukraine’s plans. The convention was adopted in Bern in Switzerland in 1979 at the third European ministerial conference on the environment. It seeks to conserve wild flora and fauna in their natural habitats.

The Ukraine government says the 163 km canal which will run through the Bistroe estuary and give Ukraine an additional outlet into the Black Sea, will follow a route which would minimise any destructive impact on the environment.

“Nobody has to fear as we have started just refurbishment work at an old deep water canal near the Romania-Ukraine border,” Viorel Kotik from the Ukraine embassy in Bucharest said without elaborating. “And this will not damage the Danube delta.”

The Bern Convention has announced that it intends to organise a field trip next month to investigate the situation because the delta is an internationally protected nature reserve.

Analysts here say the canal is being built for security reasons. “Ukraine’s plans to develop an additional canal surfaced just after Romania became a NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) member early this year,” political analyst Mircea Dutu told IPS. “The Kiev government is trying this way to have direct access to the Black Sea and therefore avoid a full control of the area from the Alliance forces.”

Dutu cites a communique issued by the U.S. State Department late May asking the Ukrainian authorities “to conduct the necessary impartial environmental impact assessment for the proposed canal and to select a route that will minimise the destructive impact on the environment.”

Dutu says the communication is unusual because “the United States is not so often concerned with ecological issues, not to forget it rejected the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Their main interest seems to be only the security in the Danube Delta area.”

This is not the first time politicians are racing in to tap into the region’s resources without any desire to protect its delicate environment.

Until 1989 the former Soviet countries poured industrial waste into the Danube. Former communist president Nicolae Ceausescu dammed large swathes of the Delta, attempting to turn swamp areas into agricultural land despite warnings by scientists that the project would fail. He also destroyed a village to build holiday homes for the party elite.

Fifteen years after his death, damaged springs are back to life. Channels that criss- cross the vast delta region are alive with birds, fish and plants.

A cross-border project involving Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine and Romania (in which alone 82 percent of the delta lies) is under way to create a “green corridor” of natural wetlands in an attempt to undo the damage caused by Ceausescu and others. A huge 805,300 square kilometre biosphere has been established to which only wardens and scientists have access.

Rehabilitating the delta involves more than just the environment. More than a third of the population living here depend on fishing, and the authorities are encouraging alternatives such as combining fishery with tourism, cattle-breeding, or breeding frogs and growing reeds for sale in France and Germany.

“With international help, Romania has done a lot in recent years to restore the natural balance and beauty of the Danube delta or to improve the life of people here,” says Mihai Barvinschi, 73, who has spent all his life here. “But the scars left by the projects during the communist years are still visible. We have to be very careful with the delta future and oppose any project – such as the construction of Bistroe canal – which would affect the environment.”

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