Irrigation Water Use in the Danube Basin: Facts, Governance and Approach to Sustainability

Abstract

In this paper we assess the irrigation water use in the Danube Basin, highlight its complexity, identify future challenges and show the relevance for a basin-wide integrative irrigation management plan as part of a more holistic and coherent resource policy. In this sense, we base our integrative regional assessments of the water-food-energy nexus on insights from an extensive review and scientific synthesis of the Danube Basin and region, experimental field studies on irrigation and agricultural water consumption, current irrigation related policies and strategies in most of the Danube countries, and regulatory frameworks on resources at European Union level. We show that a basin-wide integrative approach to water use calls for the evaluation of resource use trade-offs, resonates with the need for transdisciplinary research in addressing nexus challenges and supports integrative resource management policies within which irrigation water use represents an inherent part. In this respect, we propose a transdisciplinary research framework on sustainable irrigation water use in the Danube Basin. The findings were summarized into four interconnected problem areas in the Danube Basin, which directly or indirectly relate to irrigation strategies and resource policies: prospective water scarcity and Danube water connectedness, agricultural droughts, present and future level of potential yields, and science based proactive decision-making.

Water quality evaluation of the Danube River basin in Bačka (northern Serbia) using multivariate statistical techniques

“…Hungary and Romania, where the infrastructure has been planned for large scale irrigation application. However, although all countries extract irrigation water from the common Danube water resources, data is largely available only on the national level, therefore no comprehensive and homogeneous data set is available on the irrigation in the DRB (Dogaru et al 2019). According to the results, the occasional increasing of SS, NO2-N, PO4-P and NH4-N in some sectors of the Middle and Lower Danube can affect the irrigation sustainability.…”

Water Energy Food Nexus in Urbanizing Wetlands: Challenges and Solutions Explored through Choremes and Focus Maps

“…With this globally growing awareness about sustainable use of resources, concepts about WEF Nexus were applied worldwide (e.g., [33][34][35][36]), and so also for the Danube River. A more detailed picture towards an integrative perspective of Danube River systems in the 21st century linked to water-energy-food nexus concept, the degradation of Danube River along up to 70 years, was elaborated in various studies in the context of ecosystem services, agriculture, and urban life ( [3,[37][38][39][40][41]).…”

Ecological Sustainability Assessment of Water Distribution for the Maintenance of Ecosystems, their Services and Biodiversity

“…The present results provide the required information to integrate water related objectives into sustainability strategies: The knowledge about areas that would not allow water intensive developments could be used to design funding programs with identified “target areas” where low consumptive technologies or ecosystem restoration projects would be most beneficial. The information can also be used to decide on far-reaching political decisions such as regional water limits or the promotion of large-scale irrigation to raise agricultural revenues, as it is presently discussed for some Danube basin states (Dogaru et al 2019 ). In screening tasks for Strategical Environmental Assessment (SEA) or Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA), the ESAW-tool may help to identify the impact of planned changes of water use on sustainable water allocation, by using altered water use or land use patterns as input for the assessment tool.…”