EU4Environment: Ukraine adopts eight River Basin Management Plans
In the beginning of November, Ukraine officially adopted eight River Basin Management Plans (RBMPs). Supported by the ‘EU4Environment – Water Resources and Environmental Data programme’, the plans outline strategies and actions to protect and manage the country’s river basins.
The plans cover the Dniester, Dnipro, Don, Southern Bug, Black Sea, Azov Sea, Vistula, and Crimean river basins. With the Danube basin plan still to be adopted, the nine plans cover more than 600,000 km² (about the size of France) and will benefit some 40 million Ukrainians.
The nine plans include programmes of measures to reduce local pollution and improve deteriorated riverbeds with an estimated investment need of €7.7 billion (€7.3 billion for the 8 adopted RBMPs), or €32 per inhabitant per year (over 6 years). Seventy per cent of these measures focus primarily on sanitation.
The RBMPs are designed to address key water management issues such as wastewater from cities and industries, water abstraction from agriculture, and water ecosystem health, putting Ukraine on a path to align with the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). In particular, the Dnipro basin — the largest river basin in Ukraine and one of the largest in Europe — serves as a model for the implementation of sustainable water management practices throughout the country.
A press release by EU4Environment pays special attention to the fact that experts had to deal with very scattered sources of information in Ukraine and particularly difficult working conditions during the Russian war of aggression.
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