Hidrológiai Közlöny, 2017 (97. évfolyam)

2017 / 3. szám - TRANSNATIONAL EFFORTS - Kovács Ádám: Agricultural development and good water status in the Danube River Basin - A contradiction?

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Hidrológiai Közlöny (Hungarian Journal of Hydrology) 2017. 97. évf. 3. sz.

Agricultural development and good water status in the Danube River Basin - A contradiction?

Adám Kovács

International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River, Wagramerstrasse 5, A-1220 Vienna, Austria (E-mail:

adam.kovacs@unvienna.org

)

Abstract

The Danube River Basin District Management Plan - Update 2015elaborated by the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River(ICPDR) identified nutrient pollution as one the main concerns towards achieving good water status in the Danube River Basin (DRB). Recent investigations show agriculture as one of the main contributors to the basin-wide nutrient emissions with a share of 42% for nitrogen and 28% for phosphorus. The current nutrient river loads transported by the Danube River to the Black Sea are still 35% (nitrogen) and 20% (phosphorus) higher than the environmental objectives. This requires further reducing agricultural nutrient emissions by implementing agro-environmental policies in a consistent and coordinated way. Aligning water and agricultural policies can only ensure that the water bodies are protected and the farmer’s economic growth is not hindered. To support this goal the ICPDR initiated a dialogue between the water and agricultural sectors to develop a guidance document on sustainable agriculture to reduce nutrient pollution. The guidance will offer for the Danube countries a mechanism to adjust their national agro-environmental policies. It will on one hand provide specific advice on how to implement more efficiently the basic measures of the existing relevant legislation and on the other hand will help countries to better identify, target and finance supplementary measures to combat diffuse nutrient pollution. At the end, the implementation of the guidance will bring a win-win situation for the water and agricultural sectors by decoupling future agricultural development from increasing nutrient pollution in the DRB.

Keywords

Agro-environmental policy, Danube River Basin; nutrient pollution; sustainable agriculture; transboundary water management.

INTRODUCTION

The Danube River Basin (DRB) is the most international river basin of the world as its catchment of about 800,000 km2 is shared by 19 countries. Water management in such a large and heterogeneous basin is challenging. To address these challenges Danube countries have been cooperating on fundamental water management issues since the late 1980’s to ensure that the use of water resources is sustainable. Since 1998 the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) has been coordinat- ingthe transboundary cooperation on water management in the DRB and has been working to ensure that waters in the DRB remain clean, healthy and safe. To achieve these objectives the ICPDR elaborates river basin management plans for the DRB according to the requirements of the European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive (WFD). This includes accomplishing a comprehensive assessment on pollution arising from several sources and developing the Joint Program of Measures (JPM) to be implemented on the basin-wide level.

Improving the socio-economic situation in the agricultural sector is a prerequisite for a successful implementation of agro-environmental policies. Although agriculture is substantially subsidized by the EU and the national governments, the sector is facing socio-economic challenges. Even though more than 50% of the basin territory are under agricultural cultivation, agriculture is not among the strongest economic sectors in the DRB. The share of the agricultural sector in the total national Gross Domestic Product of the EU Member States (MS) is not significant (less than 5%), whilst non-EU MS have a share around and above 10% (ICPDR, 2015). In many regions the intensity of agricultural production is low due to the less favourable economic situation. In areas where land productivity is low, farmers often are facing socioeconomic difficulties as agriculture in these regions may not be competitive at all.

Environmental concerns are also related to agriculture since nutrients have been released from agricultural areas of the basin in significant amounts during the past decades. In the Danube River Basin District Management Plan (DRBMP) - Update 2015 nutrient pollution has been identified as one of the significant water management issues in the DRB (ICPDR 2015). Currently, about 20% of the surface water bodies are at risk to fail good ecological sta- tus/potential by 2021 due to nutrient pollution. The ultimate recipient water body of the Danube is the Black Sea, which is, being the world's most isolated sea, sensitive to eutrophication. The severe eutrophic conditions of the late 1980’s might arise again if wastewater treatment and agriculture are not managed sustainably, particularly in the terrestrial catchment area (IWAG 2005).

This paper highlights the current figures on nutrient emissions entering the Danube and its tributaries and the progress that has been achieved in pollution control over the recent years. Moreover, it presents what agro-environmental policies and measures are in place and what additional future actions are planned in the DRB toensure that besides an effective protection of the water bodies also a sustainable development of agriculture is achieved and economic disadvantages for farmers are avoided.

METHODS

To assess the point and diffuse nutrient emissions from urban, agricultural and natural areas, the MONERIS model (Venohr et al. 2011) has been applied for the entire DRB. The model application has a long story in the DRB (e.g. IWAG 2005, ICPDR 2015) resulted in a comprehensive database set up for the DRB and an enhanced model algorithm adjusted to specific regional conditions. MONERIS is an empirical, catchment scale, lumped parameter and long-term average water quality model calculating nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) emissions entering the surface waters from several point and diffuse sources and via different hydrological pathways. It also quantifies N and P