Reserve or Canal? Disputes Continue

There is apparently no ready solution to the problem of building a deep-water navigation canal, a bone of contention among the National Academy of Science (NAS), the management of the Danube Biosphere Reserve, and the Transportation Ministry. The latter insists the Danube — Black Sea canal be built via the Bystre distributary. In other words, vessels will cut across the reserve, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. The reserve management, for one, is accused of obstructing the development of the country’s transport infrastructure, despite the fact that Oleksandr Voloshkevych, director of the Danube Biosphere Reserve, stressed repeatedly that neither he nor the NAS opposes the construction of the canal as such. However, little notice was taken of the fact that, if the canal is built after all, birds will not nest on the estuary and the administration of the UNESCO program titled “Man and Biosphere” will revoke its certificate of a biosphere reserve. Transportation Ministry officials cite economic benefits to prove their case. To quote them, building a canal via the Bystre estuary could not be easier: special vessels will be used to build a compensating embankment in the place where the river flows into the sea. Meanwhile, the alternatives proposed by the NAS are before all meant to make building the canal unfeasible. Tellingly, building a lock canal to connect the Solomoniv distributary with the Zhebyrianska Bay will cost some $160 million and, in the best-case scenario, will start paying its way ten years from now.

However, while initial attempts were made to solve the problem in a civilized manner, now the discussion seems to have reached a dead end. Evidence of this is the shifting of accents from the plane of construction into the personal plane. To illustrate, an extraordinary session of the Vylkovo Town Council concluded that since 1998 (when the president signed a decree creating the Danube Biosphere Reserve in the Danube delta and introducing a new reserve zoning scheme) the reserve has encroached on the traditional rights of the local population. Allegedly, with the expansion of the reserve the locals cannot fish, graze cattle, gather hay, and cultivate land. However, to quote Mr. Voloshkevych, fishery was never prohibited on the territory of the reserve, except that in the nesting period fishing boats were prohibited to approach the three sandbanks. And for environmental reasons and to protect locals from unwanted competition since last year, fishing permits have been issued to local fishermen only. Incidentally, the Odesa Fish Plant and the Fish Industry Committee released official statements opposing the construction of the canal via the Bystre distributary.

Complaints regarding vegetable land plots on the territory of the reserve are just as conflicting. To date, nobody has restricted access to them and has no intention of doing so. There is no telling, however, how tasty the strawberries will be, grown in the area where materials posing a health hazard, for instance saltpeter, will be loaded.

According to Mr. Voloshkevych, nobody encroached on the locals’ rights for the sake of flora and fauna. And they did not complain. Cattle grazed all over the territory of the reserve (with the exception of the coastal sandbanks), hay was gathered everywhere except remote places, and the reserve administration started the rush business. Last season 950 natives of Vylkovo were employed to collect and sort rushes.

Nonetheless, the session decided to leave no more than 8% of the territory under the exclusive control of the reserve, instruct the town mayor to take over from the reserve a total of 2,541 hectares of waterways, and, lastly, inform the president that the clause of his decree on setting up a reserve has not been fulfilled, and request that he investigate the matter.

The president, however, rejected the decree on the partitioning of the Danube Biosphere Reserve drafted by the Transportation Ministry. To quote Kostiantyn Syzov, deputy director for maintenance of canals and vessels at Detla-Lotsman, the reason behind the accusations against the reserve was the fact that when the new zoning scheme was developed and coordinated with “the Committee on Fishing Industry, the Forestry Committee, and other concerned ministries and departments,” some interested parties were ignored. As a result, the reserve zones are arranged in such a way that no matter which way the canal is constructed, the flora and fauna will be affected. Therefore, the Delta- Lotsman management claims that in developing alternative options the NAS pursued a single goal, that is, to prevent construction by offering very costly options which are not more but even less acceptable for the environment. However, when the Danube Port company offered to invest in the construction, officials did not show much enthusiasm for the proposal, claiming that to involve private structures in this case would not benefit the canal.

Currently, the Transportation Ministry believes that the situation should be remedied and radical measures should be taken to build the canal. Before anything else, such measures would be to revise the zoning scheme with due account of both international and national laws on human rights and the need for harmonious coexistence of the reserve with the transport infrastructure of the water region. After all, Ukrainian money, which the national shipping companies pay for using Romanian canals, is invested into the Romanian economy.

The reserve management believes that if there is no money for alternative options, at least compromise solutions should be sought. For instance, the canal could be used jointly with other countries for heavy- displacement vessels, or arrangements for preferential terms of using the canal could be reached with the Romanians. After all, one more circumstance must not be overlooked. If Ukraine starts building a canal via the Bystre distributary, this can affect the Sulinsky navigation canal. In line with international regulations, if changes in the hydrologic system in one country can potentially affect the hydrologic system in another, such changes must be agreed upon beforehand.

Regrettably, in this context little notice is taken of the fact that Ukraine is second to last in the quantity of natural reserves, followed only by Afghanistan. Notably, the total acreage of national reserves is a mere 4.2% of the country’s territory. By contrast, in European countries, whose standards we want to achieve, reserves account for almost 10% of the territory.