The Romanian chapter of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) begins a 150,000 euros project in August to ecologically reconstruct the Danube meadows until spring 2016. ‘The renaturation of Danube meadowland can generate on long term the premises of a model of sustainable development of local communities. The ecological reconstruction has a significant potential for the social and economic development of communities, and it can bring benefits on a local level, both for farmland owners and small entrepreneurs in industries like tourism, fisheries or small business based on local products,’ WWF-Romania project manager Raluca Dan stated in a release.
The initiators of the project officially called ‘Active participative governance for sustainable development through ecological reconstruction of Danube meadowland’ say local communities will be involved in the unfolding of the programme, to identify the best solutions. Moreover, the project will allow evaluating, acknowledging and integrating into the development strategies the eventual benefits of renaturated areas for farmland owners, public authorities and interested factors involved locally. ‘The lower Danube is the only free-flowing sector of the river; over the last decades, however, it was degraded by diking, draining of flood areas of the meadows, building of embankments, and polluting. All these actions led to a decline of natural resources, to social and economic unbalance, to a decrease of biodiversity, of the ecosystem services, of the capability of adaptation to climate change, such as catastrophic flooding,’ WWF-Romania points out.
The project of renaturation of Danube meadowland has an impact both on national level and in the pilot areas in the communities Gostinu, Pietrele, Prundu, Greaca (Giurgiu County) and Cascioarele, Chirnogi, Oltenita (Calarasi County); also, in other fitting similar areas.
According to the Danube Delta National Research and Development Institute, biodiversity in the area is represented by 7,405 species of plants and animals, which place the Danube Delta on the third position worldwide in these terms, after the Great Corral Barrier of Australia and the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador.