Past and Future Management of Lower Danube Wetlands System: A Bioeconomic Appraisal

The Lower Danube Wetlands System has been and remains one of the largest and most diverse wetlands formations in Europe. It extends over ten thousands square kilometers along the lower Danube river stretch of 840 kilometers long. In the last century several types of management were applied at the LDWS and river catchments and a wide range of structural and functional effects occurred in time. The management system promoted between 1950s and late 1980s was designed according to the principles of neoclassical economic theory. The objectives of this paper are: i) the implementation of holistic approach and management for identifying the past and future drivers, pressures and impacts upon LDWS; ii) use of the methods of biological economics for the assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of past and future strategies and management of the LDWS and iii) identification of the overall goal and targets for future holistic bioeconomic management of the local (IBr), micro-regional (LDWS) and regional (LDC and North-Western Black Sea) biological complexes. As the reference state for LDWS we have adopted that of the beginning of 1960s when no major structural and functional changes had occurred. Increase in demands for more agricultural land and food production, hydropower or for waterway transport as well as for urbanization and industrial use at the Danube river catchments have resulted in significant changes. These together with a set of main actions consisting in: extensive conversion of wetlands into agroecosystems; intensification of auxiliary energy and material inputs into food production systems; point and diffuse pollution; hydrotechnical works and overexploitation of natural resources have been identified as drivers and pressures responsible for a wide range of structural and functional changes which have occurred in the last four decades in the LDWS and North-Western Black Sea. All sets of local and regional impacts are described and viewed as major threats for natural capital and long-term socioeconomic development. The crude estimation of total economic value of the remained wetlands (SIBr) and established polders in the IBr biological complex, allowed a better assessment of the short term and sectoral advantages against long term and holistic disadvantages. The achievements of such analysis described in section 4 clearly suggest the multifunctional role and economic value of self-maintaining wetlands ecosystems compared with monofunctional role and economic value of the human-dependent agroecosystems. It is determined that the economic inefficiency of the former applied mono-functional policy and management at the IBr wetlands system consists on the one hand in the huge cost of wetlands transformation (more than one billion USD) and additional cost for intensive production of crops, which accounted for at least 90 million USD per year (20 per cent higher than the crops market price of 70 million USD per year) and on the other hand in the monetary loss (173 million USD per year) due to cutting off three valuable ecosystem functions by implementing mono-functional farming system. Bearing in mind the difference between the reference and current states of LDWS and the respective economic consequences as well as the long-term objectives of the new established policy in the region, which deals, with: a) biodiversity conservation; b) 40 per cent reduction of the potential nutrient discharges into Black Sea by 2010 and c) sustainable development, we are proposing an operational plan for a holistic bioeconomic management of these wetlands. This plan is, based on the reconstruction of 1500 square kilometers of wetlands in the LDWS and implementing multifunctional farming in LDC and remaining polders in the LDWS. We have also estimated the potential impacts of wetlands reconstruction of LDWS’s functions and its total bioeconomic value.