FAO TCP Integration of rural water management in river basin management in the Tisza Basin (IRWAT)
DRAFT
Def. draft version of 2005 June 24th
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Technical Cooperation Programme
Countries: Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Slovakia, and Serbia-Montenegro.
Project title: “Integration of rural water management in river basin management in the Tisza Basin (IRWAT)”
Project symbol: FAO/TCP ......
Starting date: January 2006
Completion date: June 2007
Government Counterpart(s): MARD Hungary; MoA Slovakia; MAP Ukraine; MAFRD Romania; and MAFWM Serbia
FAO contribution: preliminary estimate 398,596 USD (subject to change)
Table of contents
1Project Summary
2Background and justification
2.1History of the project request
2.2River basin management in the Tisza Basin and transboundary aspects
The Tisza basin
Regional developments
2.3Country background
Hungary
Slovakia
Ukraine
Romania
Serbia & Montenegro
2.4Rural Water Management Issues
2.5Relation to Other Technical Co-operation Projects
2.6Intervention area
3Objectives of the assistance
3.1Specific project objective
3.2Target groups
4Project outputs
5Workplan
5.1Timetable of activities
5.2Project organisation
6Capacity building
7Inputs to be provided by FAO
7.1Personnel Services
7.2Duty Travel
7.3Contracts, letters of agreements or contractual service agreements
7.4General operating expenses (GOE)
7.5Materials, supplies and equipment
7.6Direct operating costs (DOC)
7.7Training
8Reporting
9Government contribution and supporting arrangements
10Project budget covering FAO inputs (US $)
11Annexes
4th revised version, 24 May 2005
FAO TCP Integration of rural water management in river basin management in the Tisza Basin (IRWAT)page 1
1Project Summary
In the framework of the development of institutional infrastructure for river basin management purposes, the 5 Tisza countries find it crucial to pay more attention to the integration of the Agricultural Sector in river basin management activities and as such promote the integration of rural water management in river basin management activities.
The project will therefore develop methods, instruments and procedures for this integration; inform relevant staff of the ministries and local and regional water management authorities and other stakeholders on the existence of the developed methodology (dissemination); and train respective stakeholders (mainly the staff of the local and regional water management authorities) in their use. The methods, instruments and procedures will be tested in one or two pilot areas (most likely in the Ukrainian-Hungarian and Romanian-Hungarian border regions) in order to assure practicability.
The concrete outputs of the project will be a set of manuals on aforementioned methods, instruments and procedures; a number of staff of local and regional water regulatory bodies trained on the use of these manuals; and all stakeholders (ministry staff, local and regional water regulatory bodies, water users in the mentioned pilot areas) properly informed on their existence by active dissemination of project results.
2Background and justification
2.1History of the project request
In November 2000, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) of Hungary requested FAO to provide a technical assistance project, involving the countries in the Carpathian Sub Basin of the Danube, to address recurring problems related to water management and environment. FAO has acted on that request and prepared a project outline, which was in a later stage (May 2002) revised, in order to adapt the project in compliance with the EU Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC (WFD). That project outline was consequently approved as basis to be elaborated into a full-fledged FAO regional Technical Cooperation Programme (TCP).
Due to certain delays, FAO decided to hold a seminar to explore the willingness of the countries in the Carpathian basin (Hungary, Romania, Serbia & Montenegro, Slovakia and Ukraine) to still co-operate on the issue of integrated water management of trans-boundary river systems. As model area the Tisza catchment was selected, which is (by far) the largest catchment of the Carpathian sub-basin of the Danube. This seminar was held in November 2003 in Budapest.
The Seminar concluded that bilateral co-operation activities should be encouraged, but more should be done on multinational approaches. In this context it was recommended that the Tisza Water Forum should be gradually transformed into a full fledged river basin committee according to EU WFD principles, and that the planned FAO/TCP project should aspire technical activities such as the development of river basin action plans, digital mapping basin wide, capacity building on WFD aspects for non-accession countries, the establishment of an early warning system in Tisza basin, and the development of knowledge about access to international funding (CADSES, World Bank, ERDF etc.). As such the recommendations of the Seminar were entirely tailored towards RBM issues.
After the seminar, in the year 2004, important changes took place in most countries in the Tisza basin with regard to responsibilities of line ministries. In Slovakia and Romania, the responsibility for RBM was transferred to the respective Ministries of Environment in these countries and in Hungary and Ukraine the relevant responsibilities of the Ministry of Environment (and Water) were confirmed or reinforced. In the light of these changes, the interest in FAO support for RBM issues dwindled and the respective ministries of Environment and Water clearly expressed that they would look elsewhere (ICPDR, EU, UNDP/GEF) for support on RBM issues.
However, the Ministries of Agriculture continued their support for a FAO/TCP project, which would logically not concentrate mainly on RBM issues anymore, but rather on the integration of rural water management (which responsibility remains under the respective Ministries of Agriculture) in RBM activities. In this context, the request for FAO/TCP support was revived during the last quarter of 2004 and it was decided to start fact finding missions and project formulation at the beginning of 2005. During the period February/April 2005, the project formulation team responsible for these activities visited all 5 Tisza basin countries and interviewed responsible staff of the ministries responsible for agriculture, rural development, water management, river basin management and environmental protection. The activities of the formulation team were concluded with a short workshop on 3 May 2005 in Budapest in which the main elements of a draft project proposal were discussed. After the workshop, the project formulation team proposed the document under consideration.
2.2River basin management in the Tisza Basin and transboundary aspects
The Tisza basin
The geographical situation of the Tisza basin is shown on the map on the next page.
The Tisza catchment measures approx. 157,000 km2, from which 47 percent is in Romania, 29 percent in Hungary, 10 percent in Slovakia, 8 percent in Ukraine and 6 percent in Serbia & Montenegro. The average discharge of the river is 766 m3/s at the confluence of the Tisza with the Danube. Some 15 million people live in the Tisza basin area. With its less than 100 inh./km2 the character of the area is typically rural.
The drainage basins of the tributaries of the Tisza River are rather different from each other in topography, soil composition, land use and hydrological characteristics. The Carpathian Mountains create in a half circle the northern, eastern and south-eastern boundary of the Tisza catchment. The western – south-western reach of the watershed is comparatively low, in some places – on its Hungarian and Serbian reaches, it is almost flat.
The higher parts of the catchment, particularly the Slovakian and Ukrainian part and the higher altitudes in Romania, are covered with (mainly deciduous) forest. The middle altitude parts in Romania are generally deforested and used for small agriculture and grazing. The lower parts and floodplains are used for more or less intensive agriculture, except where larger wetlands and traditional grazing areas exist.
source: ULRMC, Ukraine
Problems facing water management are abundant and include severe flooding (the most recent in November 1998 and March 2001), drought problems in summer (manifesting particularly in a number of recent years), landslides and erosion in the uplands (particularly the Romanian part), accidental pollution by mining activities (i.e. the cyanide spill occurring at Aurul Baia Mare in January 2000) and agricultural pollution (sensitivity of the Danube and Black Sea for nutrient pollution). The first two problems, flooding and drought, may be aggravated by climatic changes. Accidental pollution and nutrient pollution from agriculture affect aquatic ecosystems and drinking water and large scale land reclamation has damaged wetland ecosystems and intensified flooding problems in other areas.
Even though aforementioned problems exist, the Tisza river is, due to its relatively low population density (less than 100 inh./km2), moderate industrial development and typical rural character of its catchment basin, still a rather clean and natural river, with huge potential for unique aquatic ecosystems, nature protection, rural agricultural development and tourism as well.
Regional developments
With respect to RBM, substantial regional activities have been carried out under the umbrella of the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) since 1994.
ICDPR was established to coordinate the Danube basin wide activities among the countries related to sustainable use and protection of waters and related ecosystems. To achieve these goals the ICPDR implemented several program like the Danube Pollution Reduction Programme (DPRP), together with other international organisations. By its nature, ICPDR, in its early stages, mainly concentrated on water quality management issues, with only limited reference to the interaction between land and water, except in the case of prevention of damage to the Danube environment. Issues of rural water management, rural development and land-use planning as instruments in the control of water quality and the quality of the aquatic ecosystem are not subject of the underlying Danube Convention and have not been covered extensively in ICPDR activities.
Co-ordination efforts, conducted mainly through the respective Ministries of Environment and Water (who have recently adopted responsibilities for water management in a number of Tisza countries), have been largely directed at inter-ministerial co-ordination. Danube basin wide activities were coordinated by the ICPDR. On the Tisza basin the countries collaborated mostly through bilateral transboundary committees and more recently through the Tisza River Basin Forum on Flood Control/Tisza Water Forum and by the ICPDR Ad Hoc Tisza Expert Group.
The implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) requirements has become a priority of ICPDR since November 2000. Although the WFD promotes sectoral integration, implementation stress often leads to considering water quality issues as autonomous problems, which can be solved through specific pollution control measures. In most EU countries, the WFD is applied with very little interaction with wider land management and rural development issues. In the preparation of River Basin Management Plans (RBMP), these shortcomings are quite often translated in a lack of involvement of ministries other than those responsible for water management and water quality and in a simplification of cause-effect relations in water quality issues. The situation in the countries in the Tisza basin does not differ significantly from the situation in other EU countries.
Recently, policy changes are imminent. For the Danube basin, this is reflected in ICPDR ‘s Joint Action Plan of 2001, in which wider sustainable development objectives call for an improvement of the living standards of the Danube River basin population, the enhancement of economic development of the region and the restoration of the region’s biodiversity, all issues going far beyond basic water quality management. The translation of these objectives in concrete actions leaves much to be desired.
In December of 2004, at the occasion of the first inter-ministerial meeting of ICPDR in Vienna, the five countries sharing the Tisza basin presented a memorandum of understanding in which it was agreed to prepare a RBMP for the Tisza basin by the end of 2009. The scope foreseen for this RBMP is somewhat larger than that envisaged by the WFD, taking into account the requirements of the ICPDR Flood Action Programme and issues of sustainable development in the Tisza region. At the same time, the intentions of UNDP/GEF were welcomed to actively support this initiative by launching a new Tisza project which aims at the establishment of mechanisms for land-and water management.
Due to the nature of rural water management (which is implemented rather at a sub-regional and local scale), supranational co-ordination has been less noticeable than with river basin management. This probably with the exception of two major UNDP/GEF initiatives such as UNDP/GEF Danube Regional Project; Reduction of Pollution Releases through Agricultural Policy Change and Demonstrations by Pilot Projects, which made an inventory of agricultural pollution sources at the regional scale of the entire Danube catchment. This inventory will be followed by a more solution-oriented second phase in which good agricultural practices are tested at pilot scale.
The integration of rural water management in the RBM context has therefore not yet developed to an extent that the agricultural sector is sufficiently involved in RBM decision-making procedures. This issue is partly covered by the aforementioned international UNDP/GEF programmes on land and water management, but additional support from FAO-TCP is sought to specifically address the current lack of capacity in the integration of the agricultural sector inRBM decision-making processes.
2.3Country background
Hungary
Most of the Tisza Basin in Hungary, with the exception of smaller mountainous areas in the North of the country belongs to the Pannonian plain, which covers large parts of Hungary. Due to its rich loess soils and favourable climatic conditions, the Pannonian Plain is a major agricultural area of supraregional potential.
Arable land occupies about 60% of the cultivated area; the rest is grassland and trees. The main crops in the Tisza basin in Hungary are cereals which occupy 70% of the arable land. Cattle breeding is also important in the area. Although landownership is disperse, the average farm size is well over 5 ha. In 1989, the year of political changes in Hungary, agriculture accounted for 14% of GDP. Since then, this percentage has steadily declined until little more than 4% in the year 2002. The decrease in percentage of GDP had a significant effect on the economic development of the Tisza valley, where arable land is the most important resources. At this moment, the contribution of agriculture to GDP is stable and the export of agricultural products and the contribution of food industry to GDP are growing.
Risks of the agricultural sector are posed however by unprofessional production methods and agri-technical measures and excessive use of natural resources and agrochemicals by some prosperous farms in certain areas.
Approximately one quarter of the low-lying lands has no natural drainage and water logging causes problems in more than 10% of all cultivated land. Recently, rainfall events have become more variable and the occurrence of droughts increased significantly. It should be mentioned that the damage caused by droughts now exceeds that caused by floods and water logging.
The drainage basin of the Hungarian part of the Tisza basin consists of an extensive system of channels, pumping stations and other hydraulic structures. At present, 27,500 km of drainage canals and 235 surface reservoirs with a combined capacity of 259 million m3 are available fro drainage and water storage of internal waters.
Water management in the sense of the management of the natural resource water is the responsibility of the Ministry of Environment and Water (MoEW). Hungary has adapted its legislation and regulations to the EU WFD and other EU water legislation and has recently adopted decrees on the delineation of river basins, etc. An intergovernmental national co-ordinating body exists, dealing with water management issues (Water Framework Strategic Coordination Interministerial Committee); it includes the Ministry of Agriculture and Regional Development (MARD). Substantial progress has been made on the preparation of RBMPs via pilot project activities.
MARD has its own responsibility for rural water management, mainly related to issues such as drainage and irrigation. At the same time, MARD is responsible for rural development issues, but programmatic links with water issues are scarce. On the regional and local level, little co-ordination between the ministries exists on water management issues, except where specific projects are (jointly) executed. On the interface of water and agriculture, there is some concern on pollution with particularly pesticides and herbicides; nutrient pollution may become significant when agriculture would intensify. Integration of land- and water management is a necessity and should be supported by rural development activities.
Slovakia
The Tisza river basin occupies the most eastern quarter of the country and consists mostly of (the somewhat lower part of) the Carpathian Mountains and partly of a relatively small floodplain, which is the northernmost edge of the Pannonian Plain. Agriculture is only of limited importance in this part of the Tisza basin, with exception of the aforementioned floodplain on the border with Hungary and Ukraine.
Due to the intensity of agriculture there, some problems exist with nutrient pollution, but due to the size of the area in comparison with the whole Tisza basin, the significance for Tisza water quality is minor and problems do not exceed the national scale.
As in Hungary, the responsibility for water resources management is with the Ministry of Environment (MoE). The Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) is responsible for rural water management, which due to climatic conditions mainly refers to drainage and related water quality problems. Rural development is also under the responsibility of MoA, but as in Hungary there is little interaction between rural development and water.
With respect to water resources management, Slovakia is, together with Hungary, probably the most advanced of the 5 Tisza countries, although Romania and also Serbia have made almost as good progress in developing their legal and institutional systems for water resources management. Appropriate legislation for the implementation of the WFD is in place, river basin authorities are fully functional and a start has been made to prepare RBMPs. There is acknowledgement from MoE that land-and water management should be better integrated (see minutes of meeting of the ministerial meeting of the Tisza Forum in June 2004), but this mainly refers to environmental protection and not so much to rural development. Co-ordination between the ministries is good and collegial, but no national body or river basin councils exist where water management issues can be discussed.