Preface

Executive Summary

Introduction

Country Report - Romania

Country Report - Ukraine

Country Report - Slovakia

Country Report - Hungary

• Natural and socio-economic conditions
• Networking
• Mapping
• Recognised needs for sustainable development

Country Report - Yugoslavia

Annexes, appendices, references

• Summary
• Country Chapters

Recognised needs for sustainable development

Development targets

Development should take place only based on the protection of human life and goods. The goal of sustainable development is to protect and maintain existing natural values. Based on the conservation of the environment and the rational modification of the environment, new conditions for management may be prepared.

Special emphasis should be placed on the creation of linkages between areas and regions, the set-up of cooperative and win-win structures between regions, and the promotion and evolution of the subsidiarity principle.

The following structure indicates the development targets at stake.

Development of the Tisa valley flood protection:

• Building reservoirs for flood water
  
• Lifting embankments
  
• Developing inland water systems
  
• Draining canal systems according to the new property boundaries
  
• Identifying and creating reservoirs for retaining inland waters
  
• Creating ecological networks and corridors
  

Transformation of polluting companies:

• Increasing security levels
  
• Modifying technologies
  
• Revealing and terminating pollution sources
  
• Managing solid waste
  
• Managing liquid waste
  

Infrastructure development (road, railroad, drinking water and wastewater collection and treatment systems):

• Improving the quality of existing plants
  
• Making new investments
  

Extension and modernisation of monitoring system:

• Funding the hydrological monitoring system
  
• Detecting chemical pollution affecting water bodies
  
• Monitoring the changes of plant and wildlife (bio-monitoring)
  

Nature conservation tasks:

• Revitalising and creating new type of utilisation of oxbows
  
• Reconstructing wetlands
  
• Changing the status and utilisation of lands taken out of agricultural production
  
• Protecting ecological systems and sites existing in water reservoirs (taking care of them, for example, by reallocating them in time when floods occur)
  
• Changing the status of flood-plains for environmental sensitive areas
  
• Developing study directions

Enlargement of economic ties in the river basin:

• Establishing sustainable agriculture
  
• Changing land use patterns in agricultural production
  
• Elaborating extensive crop production and pasture management practices
  
• Developing oxbow management practices ("fok-gazdálkodás")
  
• Organising the production of medicinal plants and its processing
  
• Developing small animals breeding
  
• Enforcing agri-ecological methods
  
• Promoting the rational use of nature conservation areas
  
• Transforming plant production and husbandry into bio-production
  
• Establishing forestation of areas with steep slopes and poor soil productivity
  
• Developing water tourism
  
• Developing services and physical environments for medical tourism
  
• Developing fishing tourism
  
• Developing infrastructure and services near the river
  
• Producing natural building materials
  
• Producing natural products and structures
  
• Renewing ancient craftsmanship
  
• Preserving natural and produced plants
  
• Increasing wild animal management
  
• Reconstructing historical buildings
  
• Renewing folklore and cultural events associated with churches
  
• Promoting gastronomic events
  
• Twinning of settlements and developing their economic cooperation
  
• Developing information network for settlements in the Tisa river basin and organising product offer.
  

Recognised needs

Hungarian priorities for the sustainable development of the Tisa river basin are as follows:

• Protecting human lives and social goods
  
• Increasing the carrying capacity in the river basin for the human population
  
• Renewing the Great Plain programme
  
• Increasing the use of natural resources
  
• Developing infrastructure (transportation and water management)
  
• Undertaking nature and environmental protection activities
  
• Transforming polluting companies
  
• Renewing monitoring system
  
• Protecting biodiversity
  
• Increasing soft-tourism and medical tourism
  
• Developing cooperative programmes with neighbouring countries
  
• Promoting general spatial planning concepts
  
• Promoting sectoral cooperation
  

Justification

The development of comfortable space to live for the inhabitants of the Tisa river basin requires targeting several goals:

• The inconstant water levels of the Tisa river always mean a threat to people. The floods in the 1998-2000 period justified this.
  
• A flood is not just simply a water body, but there are several series of reservoirs along the river that have to be taken into account.
  
• The experience of the last year's flood protection activities showed that compliance with flood protection requirements could decrease the loss of both personal and communal properties. As a result of effective protection activities, no human lives were threatened.
  
• Increasing the carrying capacity of the river basin for human population:
  
• The construction works for flood protection and the water quality monitoring activities are and will be essential factors for human settlements in the Tisa river basin.
  
• Interventions in the Tisa river basin transformed the original state of the ecological environment significantly. The present state of the environment serves as the basis for future development planning and implementation.
  
• The European Union requires a switch from intensive to extensive agricultural practices on several hundreds of thousands hectares. This will result in a decrease of the carrying capacity of the river basin for inhabitants, if it is compared to the old situation. This decrease in carrying capacity for inhabitants has a countereffect on the biodiversity of the area that may increase.
  
• The utilisation of ecological conditions as a result of the extensive agricultural practices will be changed. Therefore, additional jobs - more specifically, different types of craftsmanship with long traditions in the region - should be generated. As a result of these economic activities, the social tensions at regional and national levels should be balanced. The role of the so-called Hungaricums (product with a special national character) should be assessed in depth. A high degree of processing should be achieved.
  

Nature and environmental protection activities

After reaching the acceptable level of the water quality, with the constant operation of the monitoring system, the maintenance of favourable ecological conditions could be checked.

The sound management of wetlands contributes to preserving biodiversity in the areas.

Since the Tisa river basin has a significant biodiversity compared to the European Union average, there is a clear need to take advantage of the decrease in agricultural production due to extensive methods.

Attracting visitors to the Tisa river basin requires quality services during professional programmes and free time available for them.

In close cooperation with neighbouring countries, high-level tourism can be developed. In order to do so, downstream resort areas should be protected by upstream special reservoirs planned according to the industrial and agricultural technology in use.

Development of cooperative programmes with neighbouring countries

General spatial planning

There is not doubt that international planning is a prime instrument in regional rural development, because it allows the linkage with natural resource management and thus paves the way for sustainable development.

In regional rural development projects, physical planning is supplemented by a participatory decision-making process, and sometimes even replaced by it. Purely physical planning ideally works on the assumption that by optimising the planning instruments, while concomitantly rationalising planning organisation and the planning process, the result will be optimal problem solutions. In regional rural development projects, however, the focus is on generating a social basis for resolving problems and conflicts. International planning thus becomes a multisectoral process in which the power constellations are of decisive importance for the end result. Mechanisms allowing conflicts to be worked through or a consensus to be found are major influencing factors.

Sectoral cooperation

International development means that a great many actors take responsibility for the careful and sustainable use of natural resources. Modern projects on natural resource management combine interventions in different sectors and work with target groups at several levels in an attempt to achieve a regional balance between the often conflicting interests of ecology and short-term economic goals. This is why cooperative programmes should be developed with neighbouring countries.

Sectoral breakdown of recognized needs