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Environmental Security for the Danube Basin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Arthur H. Westing
Arthur H. Westing
Affiliation:
Senior Research Fellow, International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Fuglehauggata 11, N-0260 Oslo 2, Norway, also Adjunct Professor of Ecology, Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA.
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Extract

This paper examines the level of environmental security in the Danube River drainage basin: an ecogeographical region covering 800 thousand square kilometres, supporting some 86 million inhabitants, and occupying greater or lesser portions of 12 nations—especially of the 8 riparian nations. The waters of the basin are important, if not indispensable, to the basin inhabitants for various purposes, among them: household, municipal, agricultural, industrial, waste disposal, transportation, power generation, fishing, and aesthetic.

Despite a flow at the mouth of some 6,500 cubic metres per second, the Danube basin waters do not suffice for all of these diverse and sometimes conflicting demands that are placed upon them, this paper outlines the resulting environmental problems—especially those associated with Danubian pollution, habitat disruption, and the generation of hydropower. It refers to the existing legal instruments that address environmental vandalism (especially in time of war), pollution (of both air and water), habitat disruption, and resource utilization (both non-extractive and extractive), noting their levels of acceptance and their lacunae.

Type
Main Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , Winter 1989 , pp. 323 - 329
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 1989

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