Climate Exchange

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The Danube River Basin climate

adaptation strategy

International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River

limate change impacts will pose an increasingly significant

threat in the Danube River Basin (DRB) if the reduc-

tion of greenhouse gas emissions is not complemented

by climate adaptation measures. Due to changes in temperature

and precipitation, impacts are expected for different sectors on a

transboundary scale because water and its availability is a cross-

cutting issue with major relevance for different sectors. Therefore,

water is a key focus for adaptation steps on different levels and

for integrating different stakeholders and interest groups.

More work still needs to be done to clearly understand the scale and

magnitude of pressures and impacts, but it is obvious that there are

actions that can and must be taken now, among the priorities for the

overall management of the DRB. As a starting point, an international

conference on Water and Climate Change in the DRB was held in

December 2007, raising awareness and drawing first conclusions on

the way forward. This event has opened a dialogue about climate

change and adaptation in the DRB and work is ongoing in line with

policy developments, specifically at the level of the European Union.

The most recent step is the development of a Strategy on Adaptation

to Climate Change for the whole Danube basin, based on the find-

ings of the research.

Protecting the Danube River Basin

From its source to the Black Sea, the Danube is approximately

2,800 km long, making it the second-longest European river after

the Volga. Its catchment area, the DRB, extends into the territories

of 19 countries and comprises more than 800,000 square kilome-

tres or about 10 per cent of continental Europe, encompassing a

wide variety of cultures, landscapes and ecosystems.

Historically, human activities such as households, industries and

agriculture have put pressure on these ecosystems, contributing to

decades of decreasing water quality. Problems built up that could

not be addressed by individual countries alone. With the fall of the

Iron Curtain in 1989, a new window of opportunity opened for the

Danube countries and the need for cooperative water management

became more obvious than ever.

The DRB is outlined by natural watersheds. Of the 19 countries

that have territories within this basin, 14 cover more than 2,000

square kilometres. On 29 June 1994, these main Danube countries –

some of them not situated on the river, but within the basin – signed

the Danube River Protection Convention

in Sofia, Bulgaria, defining

three main areas for action:

• Protection of water and associated ecological resources

• Sustainable use of water in the Danube Basin

• Managing floods and ice hazards.

Today, the Danube River Protection Convention has 15

contracting parties: 14 countries and the European Union.

Together, they form the International Commission for the

Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR). Its permanent

secretariat is based in Vienna and started its work in 1998.

Policies and management plans

In 2000, the European Union (EU) adopted the EU Water

Framework Directive (WFD).

It mandates water manage-

ment according to the outlines of natural river basins rather

than national or other administrative borders. Alongside the

implementation of the EUFloods Directive (EFD) of 2007,

the WFD is ICPDR’s highest priority as all its contracting

parties, including the non-EU countries, agreed to coordi-

nate its implementation. This involved the development of

a DRB Management Plan (DRBM Plan) in 2009,

based on

an analysis of the main pressures, water uses and environ-

mental conditions in the basin. Today, the DRBM Plan and

several Flood Action Programmes

list hundreds of meas-

ures and policies through which ICPDR and its contracting

parties work towards healthier river environments, sustain-

able water use and the protection of citizens.

In order to take the required steps on adaptation to climate

change, ICPDR was asked in the Danube Declaration from

2010

to develop a Climate Adaptation Strategy for the DRB

by the end of 2012. Within ICPDR, Germany was nomi-

nated as the lead country in this task, which is coordinated

by the River Basin Management Expert Group, comprising

national experts and representatives from different stake-

holders and observer organizations.

The first step, the ‘Danube Study – Climate Change

Adaptation’,

was initiated by the German Federal

Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and

Nuclear Safety and finalized in January 2012. The study

was developed by the Department of Geography of the

Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich and summarizes

all the latest available information on climate change and

adaptation relevant for the DRB. It provides a basis for the

second step, the ‘ICPDR Strategy on Adaptation to Climate

Change’, which is now being developed to provide guid-

ance on how to address climate adaptation in the DRB.

Climate change scenarios

The Danube study stressed that in order to assess

the future development of climate parameters, air

temperature and precipitation, most of the projects

ater