DANUBE — BLACK SEA CANAL PROJECT FORCED TO CIRCUMVENT RESERVE
In the fall of 2001, Ukraine’s Ministry of Transportation announced plans to build a navigable canal through the Danube Biosphere Reserve (DBR) using the mouth of the Bystre River. To this end, the Ministry planned to confiscate a strictly protected part of the DBR by means of a special Presidential decree. The confiscation would effectively divide the reserve into two separate parts. The Decree was drafted, and the issue was raised several times at presidium meetings of the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers.
More that 1,500 hectares of the reserve were to be confiscated. Construction of the canal would partially or completely destroy unique animals and plants (there are currently 94 Red Book rare species living in the DBR); disrupt the migration routes of several million birds belonging to 133 different species; and paralyze the reproduction process of Danube herring (95% of all Danube herring now reproduce in this area).
Access to the Black Sea through the Danube is extremely important for Ukraine’s economy and prestige as well as for the whole Danube region, particularly for the Ukrainian Danube Fleet and its ports – Ismail, Kilia, Reni and Ust-Dunaisk. On the other hand, the Danube delta is Europe’s largest wetland of international significance. To ensure biodiversity conservation in this delta, its unique landscapes are protected by a number of national and international conventions. According to the Ramsaar Convention, the reserve is included in UNESCO’s world reserve network. It is also part of the Ukrainian-Romanian border biosphere reserve. Though the canal project violates both national and international law, some $5 million of Ukraine’s budget has been earmarked for its construction.
The President of Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences (NAS), Academician B.Y. Paton, is firmly against canal construction in the reserve. Meanwhile, the Kiev Ecological Cultural Center, the Odessa Division of the Socio-Ecological Union, the Kharkov Ecological Group Pechenegi and the Zaporozhye 21st Century Eco-Club have launched a campaign in support of the DBR. Ukrainian and Russian student conservation groups, numerous Russian conservation organizations (including the BCC, SEU, Zapovedniki Eco-Center and Dront) have joined the campaign and written letters to the Ukrainian Government. The Kiev Ecological Cultural Center organized a press conference. The atmosphere at the conference was heated. Representatives from the Center also took the floor at a NAS presidium meeting, where the draft project that would have put the canal through strictly protected reserve area was rejected. Ukrainian ecological and international experts caused the canal’s lobbyists to abandon their original project in favor of one that would circumvent the reserve.
Ukraine’s NAS, whose responsibility the Danube nature reserve is, had already proposed such a variant earlier in October. According to their proposal the canal could be built along a road located in the buffer zone of the DBR. Damage to the environment from canal construction and use would be minimal. On April 16, the deputy director of Delta Lotsman (a government enterprise run by Ukraine’s Ministry of Transportation) informed the NAS that the plan to build the canal at the mouth of the Bystre entrance had been officially scrapped. Now both parties have begun work on an alternative project.
Vladimir Boreiko,
Director
Kiev Ecological Cultural Center
