D A N U B E
A new information center for the Danube river basin was inaugurated on May 17 in Bucharest, Romania. The Lower Danube Basin NGO Information Center is the second such facility in the region, the first center is located in the Czech Republic. According to Teun Botterweg, the newly-appointed team leader of the Danube Programme Coordination Unit, based in Vienna, a network of three centers is planned, one each for the upper, middle and lower basins of the Danube river. Botterweg said that the Bucharest center will cover the information needs of NGOs in four countries: Romania, Bulgaria, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine.
"The former Yugoslav countries are the only ones still missing from the program," said Cãtãlin Gheorghe, the representative of the Romanian NGOs on the Danube Programme Task Force. Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, is together with Bucharest the only major city on the Danube without a sewage system. Serbia is one of the major polluters of the Danube river, and shares many transboundary problems with neighboring countries. Affected not only by pollution, but also by war, the former Yugoslav countries may in the future be included in the program, as the UN embargoes come to an end.
The Danube river basin covers a total area of almost one million square kilometers in Europe, and is home to over 80 million inhabitants. An important resource for irrigation, transport, energy production and tourism, the Danube is also the living environment for approximately 100 species of fish, nearly half of the total found in Europe. But, as one can read in the information folder published for the inauguration of the center, competing demands for resources have affected the ecosystems of the Danube river basin. Water, soil and air pollution, as well as losses of habitat due to agriculture, urban growth, transport and energy production in the area are not only local problems, but reach an international level. And the care for rehabilitation and conservation of the quality of the Danubian ecosystem is no longer only the task of the governments, but is increasingly becoming a task of all concerned citizens.
In its central Bucharest site, the center has an information exhibit, a library, and a large conference room. Some of the most famous photographs by Cristian Lascu, voted World's Best Cave Photographer in 1993, adorn the walls. A display of stones shaped by water into different forms, including those of fishes, remind the visitor that the activity of the center is based on one major element: water.
The inauguration of the center also offered the occasion to launch the first issue of the quarterly newsletter of the Lower Danube Basin NGO Information Center, Lower Danube News. The newsletter is published in English, and contains information relevant to the entire Danube basin, with a special emphasis on its lower section.
The Bucharest based Lower Danube Basin NGO Information Center is financed by the European Union through the Phare program and is administered by the Group for Underwater and Speleological Explorations.
