Danube River Basin: Insights from the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database

About this Article
Contributed by: Aaron T. Wolf, Joshua T. Newton, Matthew Pritchard

Contributor Perspective(s): Academic
Article last edited 10 Feb 2013 by Amanda

Article originally added The date "<strong class="error">Error: Invalid time.</strong>" was not understood.The date "<strong class="error">Error: Invalid time.</strong>" was not understood. by Mpritchard

This article is linked to Integration of a Basin-Wide Framework for Protecting Danube Water Quality

The Danube passes by numerous large cities, including four national capitals (Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, and Belgrade), receiving the attendant waste of millions of individuals and their agriculture and industry. In addition, thirty significant tributaries have been identified as "highly polluted." The river is shared by a large and ever-growing number of riparian states that for decades were allied with hostile political blocs; some of which are currently locked in intense national disputes. As a consequence, conflicts in the basin tended to be both frequent and intricate, and their resolution especially formidable.

Nevertheless, in recent years, the riparian states of the Danube River have established an integrated program for the basin-wide control of water quality which, if not the first such program, has claims to probably being the most active and the most successful of its scale.

This information was excerpted or paraphrased from the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database (TFDD) by Matthew Pritchard on behalf of the original authors. This resource is available: Oregon State University Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database (TFDD) (2012). http://www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu/]