Controversa româno-ucrainiană în problema Canalului Bistroe

Abstract

The Danube Delta, a buffering interface between the Danube river catchment and the Western Black Sea is a unique place not only in Europe, but also among other deltaic ecosystems due to its high biodiversity. It is considered to be the most important wetland area in South Eastern Europe, with a significant role to the regional and global water cycle. It is the second largest delta in Europe (Volga is the first), a place with the richest ornithological fauna in the world (over 250 species), an area of highest diversity with insects, birds and fishes and a crossroads for migratory birds, a place where globally endangered and therefore rare species of birds are to be found, like Dalmatian pelicans, pygmy cormorans, red-breasted geese. Along time, the Danube Delta’s natural resources and ecosystems have been seriously affected by human careless and destructive intervention, whether it had to do with the cutting of new water channels for shipping or with the pollution of the Danube river due to sewage, industrial waste, pesticides and nutrients, reduction of flooding zones (which are natural fish nurseries) by damming, or with the ruthless exploitation of Delta’s resources through agriculture, fishing, hunting, tourism, reed growth and cutting, sand extraction. A proper ecological management of the Danube Delta as a biosphere reserve has been financially supported so far by the Romanian government, by the World Conservation of Nature Union (IUCN), by UNESCO, by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and by the World Bank. At this moment Ukraine intend to build a shipping channel over the Bistroe branch of the Danube, in the north of the Danube Delta which will have a tremendous impact over the area. It seems that political reasons and economical reasons demote the ecological and ethical ones.