Irrigation Development in Serbia Under Water Framework Directive
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Irrigation Development in Serbia Under Water Framework Directive Slavisa Trajkovic, Srdjan Kolakovic Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Nis Nis, Serbia and Montenegro Abstract Adoption of Water Framework Directive (WFD) is a turning point in development of European water resources. For the first time in the history of Europe, a unified and uniform strategy for the environment protection and water resources management was created. The goal of this paper is to point at some new events in the irrigation development in Serbia resulting from the application of the WFD. The application of the WFD can result in big changes in irrigation. One of the goals of the WFD is rationalization of the water consumption, which in the countries with the developed irrigation means that the consumption of water in the irrigation systems ought to be decreased. The second goal is the decrease of the water resources pollution. The recent investigation has demonstrated that agriculture took over the ignominious leadership in the environment pollution. Industry, which was for decades the primary polluter, is now put under control by the introduction of the waste water control and by the construction of waste water treatment facilities. In the intensive irrigation conditions, the artificial fertilizers and plants protection chemicals are washed off from the land into the recipients along with the excess water. The WFD sees a solution in the introduction of the principle “user pays” and “polluter pays”. So, the price of water is introduced as an instrument that should reduce the consumption and pollution of waters. From the irrigation aspect, it means the increase of the net water price, because, in the most of the countries, the end user pays only a portion of the real price of water. All the stated brings about the changes in this agricultural area. The choice of the irrigation method providing the rational water consumption and little water loss is emphasized. Also, the crop patterns with the plant sorts more resistant to water shortage will be an advantage. The introduction of the principle “user pays” may provoke a certain resistance in the farmers who are the users of the irrigation systems. Water, must become an economic category. This requirement should be fulfilled not because of the EU, but for our own sake. Nevertheless, the level of understanding of water resources problems in Serbia is very low. The behavior of the previous regime which did not observe economic logic has resulted in the great deal of population thinking that the state is obliged to provide water for all the users at low, non-economic prices. The authors surveyed the public (users of water) on the question of irrigation of the Leskovac field. This survey has demonstrated that the large majority of farmers (87%) understand the importance of irrigation, but a negligible part of the respondents accepts the fact that the construction of the system inevitably leads to the changes in the agricultural production (new, different sorts of crop, modern irrigation methods, and economic price of water). The construction of the irrigation system effects the modernization of the complete agricultural production. However, the expressed attitudes demonstrate that there is a strong resistance of the potential users of water to any modernization. In this case, there are no realistic conditions for the successful operation of the irrigation system, so that the construction cannot be recommended in this region. The obtained result demonstrate that one of the reasons for degrading of a large number of the irrigation systems in Serbia lies perhaps in the fact that no public was consulted in the making of decision to build the systems. Key-words: Water Framework Directive, Irrigation, Public participation, Serbia Introduction The European Union policy in a certain field is carried out through the directives issued by the European Parliament and EU Council. These directives do not only oblige the member states, but also all the candidate states for the EU pay a due attention to the to the EU directives, in order to adjust the local regulations to the legislature of the EU. The European parliament and the EU Council adopted the directive 2000/60/EC (Water Framework Directive) on 23rd of October 2000. This directive was issued on 22 th of December 2000 in the Official Journal of the European Communities (OJ) L 327, pages 1 – 72, and it came into effect on the same day (Article 25 of this directive). The Water Framework Directive has twenty-six articles and eleven annexes. It was supplemented by the Decision of the European Parliament and Council 2455/2001/EC since 20th of November 2001 that was issued on 15th of December 2001 (OJ L 331, p.1) and came into effect a day later. By this Decision, a list of priority substances in the area of water resources is established and added as the Annex X to the Water Framework Directive (Article 1, Decision 2445/2001/EC). Adoption of the Water Framework Directive is a turning point in the development of the European water resources management. For the first time in the history of Europe, a uniform strategy for environment protection and water resources management was created. The water resources in the territory of the EU become the concern of the whole Union and no autonomous decision making of the individual state in this field is allowed. The importance of this directive surpasses the boundaries of the European Union. By the force of its political and economic authority, the EU manages to enforce the directive not only in the candidate countries, but in all the countries which have the common large river basins with the EU. It is in the best interest of the Serbian water resources management to, irrespective whether Serbia will become a member of the EU or not, pay a due attention to the Water Framework Directive, and other water resources related EU directives. Many studies presented examples of WFD implementation. This paper mentions only a few latest papers. Tison et al. (2005) describes the different natural and disturbed community types found throughout the French hydrosystem. Dodkins et al. (2005) uses a single permutation procedure for developing the optimal river typology for biological elements within the WFD. Kay et al. (2005) focuses on the relationships between land use and faecal indicator organism concentrations in the Ribble drainage basin which is the single UK sentinel study area chosen for examining the implementation of the WFD. In Serbia, only few papers that were aimed at informing the professional public with the significance of the Water Framework Directive were published (Petkovic et al. 2003, Petkovic 2004). Considerably lower number of papers deals with the irrigation under WFD. Bazzari et al. (2005) evaluates the economic, social and environmental sustainability of irrigated farming land under different scenarios concerning water policy and the Common Agricultural Policy. According to the first results, the impact of the WFD may be summed up in a minor reduction of water use with a sharp decrease of farm income and a significant reduction of employment. Gomez-Limon and Riesgo (2005) uses Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) mathematical programming models for analyzing the different impact that a pricing policy for irrigation water would have. The irrigation problems in the light of WFD application were not paid due attention up to now. The goal of this paper is to point at some new events in the irrigation development in Serbia which are the result of the application of the WFD. Irrigation and WFD The agriculture consumes the greatest deal of water in the world, and it comprises 70% of total consumption. (UN WWD Report 2003). More than 40% of food required for nutrition is provided from the irrigated area. The situation is similar in the Mediterranean countries of the EU. In Italy, agriculture consumes 50 % of water, and 55% of agricultural output is produced via irrigation (Bazzani et al. 2004). The application of the WFD can result in big changes in irrigation. One of the goals of the WFD is rationalization of the water consumption, which in the countries with the developed irrigation means that the consumption of water in the irrigation systems ought to be decreased. The second goal is the decrease of the water resources pollution. The recent investigation has demonstrated that agriculture took over the ignominious leadership in the environment pollution. Industry, which was for decades the primary polluter, is now put under control by the introduction of the waste water control and by the construction of waste water treatment facilities. In the intensive irrigation conditions, the artificial fertilizers and plants protection chemicals are washed off from the land into the recipients along with the excess water. The WFD sees a solution in the introduction of the principle “user pays” and “polluter pays”. So, the price of water is introduced as an instrument that should reduce the consumption and pollution of waters. From the irrigation aspect, it means the increase of the net water price, because, in the most of the countries, the end user pays only a portion of the real price of water. All the stated brings about the changes in this agricultural area. The choice of the irrigation method providing the rational water consumption and little water loss is emphasized. Also, the crop patterns with the plant sorts more resistant to water shortage will be an advantage. Irrigation in Serbia, due to its low level of development, has its specific problems in comparison to the countries with the well-developed irrigation. Agriculture in Serbia consumes little water, so that water is not a limiting factor in the irrigation development. The environment has not been significantly endangered by the irrigation; because it is carried out only on some 30,000 ha which is less than 1% of the available land (Petkovic 2003).