Free Flow

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ater

ooperation

, S

ustainability

and

overty

radication

makes improvements difficult. Ramsar partners have therefore

focused on improving the situation by gathering substantive experi-

ence, working across administrative and political borders, in Europe.

Many wetland ecosystems are shared between several countries, yet

out of the more than 2,100 Ramsar Sites at global level, only 13 are

formally declared as Transboundary Ramsar Sites so far. With the

exception of a stretch of the Senegal river, shared between Senegal

and Gambia, all Transboundary Ramsar Sites are situated in Europe,

covering shared rivers and their floodplains, shared karst areas, exten-

sive bogs, often spreading across the watershed divide, such as in

the Giant mountains, that divide the Polish and Czech catchments

of major rivers such as the Elbe and Odra which take their source

in this area. Transboundary wetland and water cooperation is more

advanced in heavily used and densely settled floodplain areas of the

Rhine and Danube. Between Germany and France along the Upper

Rhine between Basel and Karlsruhe, and between Austria, Slovakia

and the Czech Republic in the floodplains along the Danube-Morava-

Dyje confluence, between the cities of Vienna, Bratislava and Brno.

In 2002, a tri-national non-governmental initiative for the

Morava-Dyje floodplains, jointly launched at the end of the twen-

tieth century by the expert organizations of Daphne (Slovakia),

Distelverein (Austria), Veronica (Czech Republic) and WWF’s

Danube-Carpathian programme, won the prestigious Ramsar

Wetland Conservation Award. The award recognized the incentive

work of the private organizations for cooperation towards sustaina-

ble development and biodiversity conservation in a formerly isolated

political border area. An area that was until recently cut in two

by the ‘Iron Curtain’ with trip-wires and mine fields that separated

western market economies from the eastern communist

planning zone during a large period of the twentieth

century. The scientific inventories and the ecosystem

restoration work undertaken by the award winning not-

for-profit organizations paid off and convinced the local

and national authorities in the three countries to come

together, and to formally sign a declaration of coop-

eration at a ceremony in the prestigious Zidlochovice

castle, a former hunting estate of the Austro-Hungarian

empire, located in the midst of the periodically flooded

river meadows and ancient oak forests. Over the last

ten years, the ministerial declaration was translated

into a common, trilateral management plan for a river

floodplain, centrally located in Europe. Regular coor-

dination meetings make sure that the natural assets

and ecosystem functions of the area are maintained

and restored wherever possible. The floodplains are

now at a crossroads, due to the prospect of develop-

ment infrastructure projects for continent-wide river

transport, renewable electricity production (water and

wind), and main road and railway arteries for continen-

tal trade routes. This will present a serious challenge

for maintaining and restoring sufficient natural wetland

ecosystem and floodplain areas, in order that the

human-managed ecosystems can continue to provide

effective and low-cost services, such as flood retention,

water purification, drinking water supply, timber, food,

biodiversity production and others.

An oxbow of the Rhine in France’s Petite Camargue Alsacienne, part

of the Transboundary Ramsar Site ‘Rhin supérieur’

Drainage canal in the Slovak floodplain of the Morava, part of the Transboundary

Ramsar Site ‘Floodplains of the Morava-Dyje-Danube confluence’

Image: T.Salathé/Ramsar