• The invisible price of water

    During communism, extensive irrigation systems turned the regions along the Romanian Plain into major producers of fruit and vegetables. But when the irrigation infrastructure collapsed, so did the ecosystems built around it. Today, farmers are digging wells to deal with desertification: a risky strategy.

    From the 1970s until 2000, the Sadova-Corabia irrigation system watered over 70,000 hectares of land in Romania’s Dolj and Olt counties. A set of pipelines that brought water from the Danube, the system turned the area from a sandy region predominantly used for vineyards into a fruit and vegetable paradise. Little by little, however, the system was abandoned; now only segments of it are still working.

    Agriculture in the area has changed, as has the environment. Today the Sadova-Corabia region is known not just as the homeland of Romania’s famous Dăbuleni watermelons, but also as the ‘Romanian Sahara’. Together with the south of Moldavia, Dobrogea and the Danubian Plain, it is one of the regions in Romania most affected by desertification.

    Anthropologist Bogdan Iancu has been researching the irrigation system in southern Romania for several years. Scena9 sat down with him to talk about drought, Romania’s communist-era irrigation systems, and the local reconstruction of agriculture after their decline. The interview has been edited for clarity.

    Oana Filip: How did your interest in drought arise?

    Bogdan Iancu: Rather by accident. Around seven years ago I was in the Danube port of Corabia for another research project, and at one point I heard a student talking at a table with a local, who was telling him about the 2005 floods and the irrigation systems in the area. The man also wanted to talk to me and show me the systems. It was an extremely hot summer and I thought it was very interesting to talk about irrigation and drought.

    I myself come from the area of Corabia-Dăbuleni. My grandparents lived in a village a bit north of the Danube floodplains, where there was an irrigation system with canals. This was where I learned to swim. The encounter somehow reactivated a personal story about the frequent droughts of that time and the summers I spent there. A lot of people in the area told us that the emergence of irrigation systems in the ’60s and ’70s led to more employment in agriculture. For them it was a kind of local miracle. As I realized that droughts were becoming more frequent and widespread, I became certain that this could be a research topic.

    The following year I started my own project. In the first two or three years, I was more interested in the infrastructure and its decline, the meanings it held for the locals and the people employed in the irrigation system, and how this involved their perceptions of changes in the local microclimate. Later, I became interested in the fact that people began to migrate out of the area because of the dismantling and privatization of the former collective or state-owned farms.

    I then started looking at how seasonal workers who had left for Italy, Spain, Germany or Great Britain had begun to come back to work in agriculture and start their own small vegetable farms. I was interested in how they started to develop the area, this time thanks to a few wells that have been drilled deep into the ground. So, somehow, the formerly horizontal water supply has now become vertical. This could have some rather unfortunate environmental implications in the future, because too many drilled wells that are not systematically planned can cause substances used in agriculture to spill into the ground water.

    How has the locals’ relationship with water changed with the disappearance of the irrigation system and the increasing frequency of droughts?

    The irrigation system had a hydro-social dimension. Water was primarily linked to agriculture and the planned socialist system. For a long time, the locals saw the system as the reason for the appearance and cultivation of fruits and vegetables they had never known before. For ten years after 1990, the irrigation network still worked and helped people farm on small plots of land, in subsistence agriculture, so that they could still sell vegetables in nearby towns. But after 2000 the state increased the price of water and cut subsidies. When the system collapsed, the ecosystem built around it collapsed along with it.

    At that time, something else was going on as well. The system was being fragmented through a form of – let’s say partial – privatization of the water pumping stations. The irrigators’ associations received loans via the World Bank. These associations did not work very well, especially since the people there had just emerged from the collective farming system, and political elites deliberately caused all forms of collective action to lose credibility after the ’90s.

    Because the irrigation system was no longer being used, or being used at much lower parameters than before, it no longer seemed functional. Bereft of resources, the local population saw the remaining infrastructure as a resource and sold it for scrap. It became even more difficult to use the irrigation system. This caused people to migrate abroad. The first waves of ‘strawberry pickers’ have only recently started coming back, perhaps in the past six or seven years, bringing in the money they have made in Italy or Spain.

    People have to be empowered in relation to the water they need. So these seasonal workers began digging their own wells. They have lost all hope that the state can still provide this water for them. They saw that in the Romanian Danubian Plain, thousands, tens of thousands of hectares of land were sold off cheaply to foreign companies that receive water for free, because they take it from the drainage canals. This caused even greater frustration for the locals, who not only look down on the new technologies that these companies use, but also resent their privilege of receiving free water from the Romanian state.

    How do you see the future of the area?

    It’s difficult to say. In the short term, I think the area will partially develop. But, at the same time, I think problems could arise from too many exploitations.

    The number of private wells will probably increase. Some very large companies in Romania are lobbying Brussels to accept the inclusion of wells drilled into underground aquifers (geological formations that store groundwater) into the irrigation strategy being developed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. This would mean ten years of semi-subsistence, or slightly above semi-subsistence agriculture, where the former ‘strawberry pickers’ turn into successful small farmers. We’ve already seen this in the villages on the Sadova-Corabia system. But we have no way of knowing how long this will last, and how much pressure these aquifers would be subjected to. There is a risk that they might get contaminated, because they function like pores, and the water resulting from agricultural activities, which contains nitrites and nitrates, could get in there and cause problems.

    In Spain, for instance, they are very cautious about drilling wells. Arrests have been made. It’s a political issue that contributed to the defeat of Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist party in the last elections. Many farmers in Spain privileged to have access to water could dig a well wherever they wanted, but now found themselves faced with this rather drastic law. And the People’s Party promised them that they would be able to continue digging wells.

    At the Dăbuleni Agricultural Research Station, for example, they are experimenting with exotic crops better adapted to desertification, such as dates, kiwis and a certain type of banana. Do you think people could adopt new cultures in Sadova-Corabia too?

    This already happened decades ago. With the advent of the irrigation system, people were forced to be open to cultivating vegetables and fruits they had never seen before. Someone told me how, when they ate the first eggplants, they didn’t know what to do with them, they seemed bitter. Even tomatoes, which to us seem always to have been eaten there, were only introduced in the ’60s. One person told me that when he first tried a tomato he thought it tasted like soap. But if their grandparents or parents could adapt, so will people today. Besides, most have worked in agriculture abroad with this kind of fruit.

    Have you seen any irrigation best practices that you think would be suitable for the situation in the Sadova-Corabia area?

    I think one such example is micro-agriculture, which is employed on smaller plots in Italy, for instance. There are also micro farms in Sadova-Corabia that produce organic, ecological, sustainable products and so on. And there are a few cooperatives that work quite well, some of them supply tomatoes for the Belgian-owned supermarket chain Mega Image, for example.

    Spain, on the other hand, is not a best practice model. Spain is a devourer of water resources in an absolutely unsustainable way. We’re already seeing that the Tagus (the longest river in the Iberian peninsula and an important source for irrigation) is endangered by large-scale agriculture. In the 1990s, there was small and medium-sized farming there, and I think there should be a return to that. Obviously, the economists say it’s not profitable, but it’s time to think about a decrease and not an increase, which is always cannibalistic. This kind of farming, on a medium or small scale, should also bring this irrigation system back into focus.

    Unfortunately, it’s unclear for how much longer the Sadova-Corabia system will be able to function. It has an outlet in the Danube, which dries up in the summer and is not permanently supplied with water, as it was during the socialist period. Last year, for example, irrigation electricians and mechanics working on the Danube encountered problems, because the main canal poured water into the Danube, instead of collecting from it. If the Danube is no longer a sustainable source for irrigation canals (and not just in Romania), the alternative lies in the different management of water resources.

    In the multimedia exhibition based on the project that you organized last year, there was a notion of how grand socialist projects obfuscated life narratives, and how human stories were lost to anonymity. What life narratives are being lost or hidden now, in this larger discussion of drought and desertification in the area?

    I met a woman who during communism had managed a farm where they grew peaches that were then exported to Germany and Czechoslovakia. She told me that local vegetables were exported to Great Britain; and that this export was even stipulated by the two countries. Over 200 British technicians and experts lived in Sadova-Corabia for about four years. The story of these people, these British experts, not just the Romanian ones, and how they collaborated is completely lost to history.

    In the ’70s, these people were a sort of agricultural vanguard. They were trying to propose a productive model of agriculture, a break from the post-feudal, post-war past. There were people who worked at the pipe factory and built those gigantic pipes through which water was collected from the Danube. Today, there are still people who continue to make enormous efforts to do what needs to be done. The mayor of Urzica, for example, encourages locals to sell or give away plots of land for afforestation, and the town hall is even trying to deploy its own afforestation projects.

    I have seen journalists travel to the area for two days, come back and report that socialism destroyed everything. Obviously, lakes were drained and the environmental toll was very high. At the same time, that era brought unlimited water to many areas where it was previously lacking. Acacia forests were planted. Biologists say they’re no good, as they actually consume water from the soil; but foresters everywhere defend them and say they provide moisture.

    One way or another, all these stories should be told. As should the stories of the people who went abroad for work and are coming back. These so-called ‘strawberry pickers’ or ‘seasonals’, whose lives we know nothing about, because the Romanian state doesn’t believe that five million Romanians who went to work abroad deserve the attention.

    When I went to the Dăbuleni research station, many of the researchers had grown up there and had a personal connection to the area and a notion that they were working for the place where they grew up. How does the connection between the locals and the environment change, when so many choose to work abroad?

    This is where things intersect. These people have parents who tell us that for them the emergence of the irrigation system was similar to what happened in Israel, a country that has problems with its soil and that managed to make it better with the aid of water improvement systems. They saw that desert repopulated, greened, diversified, and they saw a greater complexity in the kinds of crops they can grow. They got predictability, i.e. permanent jobs at state agricultural enterprises, or jobs that allowed them to work at home, at the agricultural production cooperative (CAP).

    One thing I didn’t know before this research was that peasants who met their agricultural production quota were given 22 acres of land that they could work within the CAPs, with fertilizer from the CAPs, and irrigated with water from CAPs. One person I talked to even drove a truck contracted by the state and sold watermelons in Cluj, Sibiu, Râmnicu Vâlcea, and Bucharest in the 1980s and 1990s. And he wasn’t the only one.

    For them, the irrigation system was not only associated with farms, but also the related industries – pipeline factories, factories making tiles that lined the irrigation channels. It was a flourishing new ecosystem. But once this system collapsed, they also came to associate it with the degradation of the environment. I spoke to a local who said that when the system worked, he didn’t feel the summer heat, even though the temperatures were just as high, because of the water in the canal network.

    The absence of water is like the absence of blood – without it, an organism can no longer metabolize. And then, naturally, the young people decided to leave. But this was not a permanent departure. They went to Spain, for example, they saw vertical water there, and they said, ‘Look, we can make our own wells, we don’t need to wait around for horizontal water.’

    Why, as a state, have we failed to come up with an irrigation project today as ambitious as Sadova-Corabia in its time?

    There’s more to it than just this one system. There are about a hundred or so chain irrigation systems that start in this area, from south of Resita all the way to Dobrogea. The problem is that these irrigation systems were in full boom before the 1990s. Now, don’t think I believe that only irrigation systems can ensure good crops. I think they should be seen as part of a mixed bag of solutions. The problem is not that no more irrigation systems have been built, but that the old ones have not been preserved, optimized or modernized. Private interests were prioritized, especially those of a very large class of landowners, and land-grabbing was prioritized to the detriment of working on smaller plots of land. And so, such infrastructures were abandoned, because the big players can afford super-performant extractive technologies.

    How do you see urban dwellers relate to droughts and irrigation?

    I have seen many of them ridiculing people in the countryside and finding it unacceptable that they use municipal water handed to them for irrigation; but, at the same time, none of them disclose the amount of water they use on their lawns, which are worthless grass. Obviously, it’s easier to laugh from inside an office and to think that people are being irrational than to understand that they’re selling tomatoes that they would have otherwise been unable to grow.

    As climate change intensifies, droughts will become more frequent. Will we see better cooperation in the face of this new reality, or more division?

    In the next five to six years I think we will see more competition for water and the criminalization of our fellow water-users. But I think that this is where the role of the media comes in. It should abandon the logic of only showing us the big, scary monster called climate change. Rather, it should detail how these climate changes are occurring at the grassroots level. I think both the press and the state should work on research and popularization, on disseminating information that talks about these effects.

    I don’t think that anything can be done without pedagogies. Yes, during the socialist period these pedagogies were abused, sometimes enforced with actual machine guns, and that was tragic. But today we don’t see any kind of pedagogy, any kind of relating. None of the measures that need to be implemented are socialized. People are not being called to their village cultural center to be told: ‘Here’s what we want to do.’ The cultural center is now only used for weddings. Some radical forms of pedagogy should be devised and disseminated locally, so that people understand the invisible price of water.

    https://www.eurozine.com/the-invisible-price-of-water
    #eau #histoire #communisme #Roumanie #irrigation #infrastructure #agriculture #puits #Dolj #Olt #acqueduc #Danube #maraîchage #vignobles #fruits #Sadova-Corabia #melons #Dăbuleni #désert #désertification #sécheresse #privatisation #banque_mondiale #émigration #saisonniers #fraises #micro-agriculture #Urzica #Bogdan_Iancu
    via @freakonometrics

  • VOYAGE AU LIBERLAND

    Gloire et déboires d’une aventure libertarienne au cœur de l’Europe
    Entre la #Serbie et la #Croatie, sur une rive du #Danube, se trouve une terra nullius, une terre non revendiquée. Une aubaine pour #Vít_Jedlička, homme politique tchèque, qui en profite pour y créer un État de toutes pièces dont il s’autoproclame président. En 2015 naît le #Liberland.

    Projet farfelu ou dernière occasion de voir surgir une #utopie en Europe ? Le Liberland interpelle Grégoire Osoha et Timothée Demeillers alors qu’ils sont en train de tourner un documentaire dans cette région meurtrie par le nationalisme. Une nouvelle frontière dans cette région déjà morcelée paraît incongrue. Les motivations de Vít semblent ailleurs. Ce jeune trentenaire, adepte de cryptomonnaie, est un fervent défenseur de l’#idéologie_libertarienne. Le Liberland devient alors une expérience unique, où tous les adeptes de cette idéologie se déplacent du monde entier dans l’espoir de vivre un moment historique. Une expérience collective qui pourrait rapidement tourner au fiasco. En effet, sur une terre où la #liberté est reine, où commence celle de l’un et où finit celle de l’autre ?

    Voyage au Liberland est le récit d’une enquête autour du monde à la recherche d’un État illusoire et de ses citoyens avides de liberté et d’argent.

    https://editions-marchialy.fr/livre/voyage-au-liberland

    #livre #Vit_Jedlicka #enclava #micro-Etat #micro-nation #Balkans #micro-nations #micro-Etats

    –-

    voir aussi ce fil de discussion sur Liberland :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/373812

  • C’est pas la Seine qui passe à Paris, c’est l’Yonne
    C’est ce que ma maman m’a appris aujourd’hui !
    Alors bien-sûr, je vérifie.

    Mais c’est bien l’Yonne selon cette règle que rappelle Yves Boquet, professeur de géographie à l’Université de Bourgogne et secrétaire général de l’association des géographes français. « Quand deux cours d’eau se réunissent, c’est celui ayant le plus petit débit qui se jette dans l’autre. » Et est donc son affluent.

    Or, à Montereau-Fault-Yonne, à leur confluent, « la Seine a un débit moyen de 80 m3/seconde pour un bassin-versant de 10.100 km2, et l’Yonne de 93 m3/sec pour un bassin-versant de 10.836 km2 ».

    C’est donc bien l’Yonne qui « traverse Paris et se jette dans la Manche, à hauteur du Havre ». Et qui mériterait le titre de fleuve usurpé par la Seine, tandis que celle-ci devrait être un simple affluent.

    "La Seine était considérée comme sacrée par des druides et donc décrétée supérieure aux autres, puis la rivière Sequana (Seine) a été élevée au rang de divinité par les Romains. Pour ceux qui la contrôlaient, imposer la Seine était une manière d’asseoir leur pouvoir."

    #ça_alors #tu_te_coucheras_moins_bête

    https://www.lyonne.fr/auxerre-89000/actualites/riviere-ou-fleuve-pourquoi-l-yonne-a-ete-detronee-par-la-seine_12727535

    • Confluent — Wikipédia
      https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confluent

      Difficultés d’application
      Cette définition comporte de très nombreuses exceptions, et il arrive que le cours d’eau le moins abondant soit considéré (à tort) comme la partie amont du fleuve ou de la rivière ; c’est le cas du Mississippi qui devrait s’appeler l’Ohio, du Gange qui devrait être la Yamuna, de l’Yenisei qui devrait être l’Angara, de l’Elbe qui devrait être la Vltava, du Rhin qui devrait être l’Aare, du Danube qui devrait être l’Inn. En France, c’est le cas de la Seine qui devrait être l’Yonne, de la Saône qui devrait être le Doubs, de l’Adour surclassé par les Gaves Réunis, etc.

      Il existe aussi des cas en « cascade ». Exemple : l’Oise est surpassée par l’Aisne qui est elle-même surpassée par l’Aire. Du point de vue hydrologique, la rivière est donc l’Oise-Aisne-Aire.

    • Près de chez mes grand-parents en Normandie coulait la Risle, joli cours d’eau navigable où se pêchaient perches, truites, brochets et anguilles et qu’on s’amusait à appeler fleuve. Le doute subsiste vu qu’elle se jette dans l’estuaire de la Seine et subit l’influence des marées, mais le SANDRE a décidé qu’elle serait rivière.

      https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risle

    • Dreiflüssestadt #Passau
      (Basse-Bavière, la direction du photo montre vers l’ouest)

      C’est ama l’importance comme ligne ouest-est qui a servi comme frontière et puis comme moyen pour le transport et des voyage dépuis l’antiquité - ainsi le nom de la Danube (aussi « Ister ») fut maintenu encore après le confluent avec l’Inn.

      À gauche c’est l’#Inn qui arrive du sud, au milieu, plus foncée, c’est la #Danube, puis, arrivant du nord, c’est la #Vilz

      Ister :

      https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ister

      Vue aérienne de Passau

    • Attention, le débit moyen à Paris change quand les quatre barrages-réservoirs construits pour assurer l’étiage relarguent des centaines millions de m3, donc le débit « moyen » de 80m3/ sec à Austerlitz connait des variations importantes, à corréler avec le débit « moyen » de l’Yonne, en été et en hiver...

  • More deaths of refugees on the Balkan route

    “The bodies of two younger men were found in the #Mrežnica River on Thursday (https://www.jutarnji.hr/vijesti/crna-kronika/iz-rijeke-mreznice-izvucena-tijela-dvojice-muskaraca-po-svemu-sudeci-radi-s). In the last three years, not counting these cases, 25 refugees have died in this area, and drowning in rivers is prevalent. Approximately one body per month appeared in one of the rivers, and only in Mrežnica six of them were found this June.”

    Reçu via la mailing-list Inicijativa Dobrodosli, mail du 01.07.2020

    #décès #morts #mourir_dans_la_forteresse_europe #Croatie #asile #migrations #réfugiés #route_des_balkans #frontière_sud-alpine #Mrežnica_River #Mreznica #frontières

    –—

    Ajouté à la métaliste sur les morts à la frontière alpine :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/758646#message806448

  • The other sad news arriving from Serbia concerns the boat which capsized on the Danube, on the Serbian-Romanian border. The boat was carrying 16 migrants from various countries and was piloted by 2 people-smugglers. Two persons drowned after the capsizing, eight were declared missing, and eight were saved.

    Reçu via la mailing-list Inicijativa Dobrodosli, mail du 29.04.2020

    PREVRNUO SE ČAMAC NA DUNAVU Na rumunskoj granici poginuo Srbin, za osmoro se traga

    Jedna osoba je poginula, a osam osoba se vode kao nestale nakon što se na Dunavu, na granici sa Srbijom i Rumunijom prevrnuo čamac.

    Prema izjavi rumunske policije, čamac se prevrnuo u noći između četvrtka i petka, nakon što su migranti napustili Srbiju, i to kada su putnici ustali, jer je voda počela da prodire u plovilo, prenosi “lavanguardia”.

    Šesnaest migranata iz raznih zemalja i dvojica osumnjičena za trafiking, srpske nacionalnosti, bili su na tom čamcu, kako prenose rumunski mediji.

    Spaseni su četvorica Sirijaca, dvojica Iračana, Jermen, Palestinac i Srbin, pre nego što je otkriveno da je jedan od putnika, takođe iz Sriije, mrtav.

    https://www.blic.rs/vesti/hronika/prevrnuo-se-camac-na-dunavu-na-rumunskoj-granici-poginuo-srbin-za-osmoro-se-traga/k5p50m0

    #décès #morts #mourir_aux_frontières #Balkans #asile #migrations #réfugiés #morts_aux_frontières #Danube #Serbie #Roumanie #fleuve #rivière

    –---

    Autres articles de presse sur l’événement:
    https://www.blic.rs/vesti/hronika/sprecena-tragedija-vatrogasci-spasli-pecarose-kod-trstenika-prevrnuo-se-camac/hz555b9
    https://www.blic.rs/vesti/hronika/tragedija-na-dunavu-iz-reke-izvucena-tela-dve-zene-jos-se-traga-za-cetiri-utopljenika/nns59sn
    https://www.blic.rs/vesti/hronika/prevrnuo-se-camac-na-dunavu-utopilo-se-sest-osoba-od-kojih-dvoje-dece/035t7zx

    ping @isskein

    • Un muerto y 8 desaparecidos tras naufragar barca con refugiados en el Danubio

      Una persona ha muerto y otras ocho están desaparecidas tras naufragar una barca con refugiados en el tramo del río Danubio que bordea las fronteras de Rumanía y Serbia.

      Según explicó la Policía de Frontera rumana en un comunicado, la embarcación había salido de Serbia y volcó en la noche del jueves al viernes, al ponerse en pie los pasajeros en el momento en que empezó a entrar agua.

      En la embarcación viajaban 16 migrantes provenientes de diversos países y dos presuntos traficantes de personas de nacionalidad serbia, informó el canal de noticias rumano Realitatea Plus.

      La policía rumana logró rescatar con vida a nueve náufragos (cuatro sirios, dos iraquíes, un yemení, un palestino y un serbio) antes de hallar sin vida el cuerpo del fallecido, un ciudadano sirio.

      Las autoridades rumanas siguen buscando a las otras ocho personas desaparecidas.

      https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20200417/48573869745/un-muerto-y-8-desaparecidos-tras-naufragar-barca-con-refugiados-en-el-

  • Là où se mêlent les eaux. Des Balkans au Caucase, dans l’Europe des #confins

    Une ville sans cimetière, une langue comprenant quatre-vingt-trois
    consonnes, une marina qui n’existe pas sur les cartes, d’anciens sous-marins soviétiques à vendre, des frontières que seul un aveugle peut traverser, des vallées perdues et des fronts de mer reconquis, des jeunes radicalisés et des vieux-croyants…
    Sur les marches de l’Europe, des Balkans au Caucase, s’étendent des espaces incertains, broyés dans les rouages d’une interminable « transition », mais propices à des rencontres improbables. Comprendre où va aujourd’hui l’Europe demande d’embarquer à bord d’une histoire des confins : à la fois récit de voyage et reportage d’après guerres, où l’on croise aussi bien les spectres de Tito et d’Enver Hodja que les figures réelles de révolutionnaires non repentis ou de mafieux imaginatifs.
    Dans ce texte où l’ambition littéraire se conjugue à un savoir panoramique, afin de remonter le fil des mémoires du continent, Jean-Arnault Dérens et Laurent Geslin ont caboté sur les rives de l’#Adriatique, de la #mer_égée et de la #mer_Noire. Ce trajet est celui des #minorités oubliées, des pays qui n’existent plus ou pas encore, des #migrations sans cesse recommencées et des rendez-vous toujours ratés.
    Le rythme de la voile raconte ce cheminement de la côte Adriatique aux rivages caucasiens d’#Adjarie et d’#Abkhazie, de la #Crimée à la #Transnistrie. Jusqu’au delta du #Danube, là où le fleuve et toutes les poussières de l’Europe viennent se mêler aux eaux de la #mer.


    http://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/catalogue/index-L___o___se_m__lent_les_eaux-9782348036057.html
    #livre #frontières #migrations

  • Le delta du #Danube, une immense « réserve de biosphère » menacée de destruction - Basta !
    https://www.bastamag.net/Le-delta-du-Danube-une-immense-reserve-de-biosphere-menacee-de-destruction
    https://www.bastamag.net/IMG/arton6338.jpg?1508315653

    Le plus grand delta d’Europe, riche d’une longue histoire géopolitique, abrite aussi une faune et une flore exceptionnelle, protégée par l’Unesco depuis 1991 comme « réserve internationale de biosphère ». Mais le développement rapide et mal contrôlé du tourisme, devenu l’une des seules sources de revenu local, ainsi que le spectre d’une future exploitation des hydrocarbures, font peser de gros risques sur ce milieu hautement fragile.

    #environnement #roumanie #bulgarie #biodiversité #pollution

  • Le #Danube, terre d’exil
    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/150817/le-danube-terre-d-exil

    Sur les rives du Danube, de la Roumanie à la Bulgarie et à la Serbie, des régions entières sont en train de se vider, plombées par une démographie en berne et par un #exode massif des forces vives vers l’Europe occidentale. Dans les campagnes des #balkans, il ne restera bientôt plus que des personnes âgées pour se rappeler l’histoire oubliée de cette grande #Migration.

    #International #Economie

  • La mémoire oubliée des #Allemands du #Danube
    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/120817/la-memoire-oubliee-des-allemands-du-danube

    Le Danube en Voïvodine. © Laurent Geslin C’est l’une des tragédies oubliées du XXe siècle. Dans la décennie qui suivit la Seconde Guerre mondiale, des centaines de milliers d’Allemands furent expulsés de #Hongrie, de #yougoslavie et de #Roumanie, où ils s’étaient installés deux cents ans auparavant. Aujourd’hui, seuls quelques milliers de leurs descendants tentent de maintenir la mémoire de la communauté.

    #International

  • La « petite #yougoslavie » de #Vienne
    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/080817/la-petite-yougoslavie-de-vienne

    Mile Stepanović, patron d’une vieille taverne balkanique, dans le centre de Vienne. © Laurent Geslin Voilà des siècles que Vienne est la « porte des #balkans », mais à partir des années 1960, l’ancienne capitale impériale des Habsbourg a accueilli des centaines de milliers d’immigrés yougoslaves. Aujourd’hui courtisée par l’extrême droite, cette communauté « yougo » n’est bien intégrée qu’en apparence et peine toujours à se réconcilier avec sa propre histoire.

    #International #Culture-Idées #Autriche #Danube

  • La #Slovaquie aspire la main-d’œuvre balkanique bon marché
    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/060817/la-slovaquie-aspire-la-main-d-oeuvre-balkanique-bon-marche

    L’usine Samsung de Galanta, en Slovaquie © Laurent Geslin La Slovaquie est en plein boom économique. Électronique ou construction automobile, les grands groupes internationaux s’installent dans ce petit pays d’Europe centrale, membre de l’Union depuis 2004. Mais la main-d’œuvre manque, d’autant que les Slovaques sont eux-mêmes tentés de partir plus à l’ouest… Premier article d’une série de quatre consacrés au #Danube dont l’histoire est aussi celle d’incessants mouvements de population.

    #International #Economie #Migration

  • La Demi-Lune rouge (1919) de #Alexander_Korda
    http://films.blog.lemonde.fr/2016/12/12/demi-lune-rouge/#xtor=RSS-32280322

    Titre original : Az aranyember Un riche pacha turc, sur le point d’être arbitrairement arrêté, s’enfuit avec sa fille à l’étranger et s’embarque pour remonter le #Danube sur un navire marchand commandé par Michael Timar. Sur le point de mourir, … Continuer la lecture →

    #Cinéma_européen #Films_des_années_1910-1919 #aventures #bateau #Hongrie #mariage_sans_amour #muet #naufrage

  • EUobserver / EU endorses ’#Danube strategy’ despite #environmental concerns
    http://euobserver.com/9/32175

    Countries will be responsible for various areas, with Austria and Romania for instance responsible for Danube navigation - a topic which has already raised criticism from environmental groups such the World Wildlife Fund.

    “The Danube strategy has conflicting targets, particularly when it comes to improving navigation, which can come at the expense of the environment,”

    #Europe