Protecting Balkan biodiversity in the Sava river basin floodplains

LIFE support to a partnership of western Balkan beneficiaries has helped strengthen sustainable management approaches for the Sava River basin flood plains. Project works here have successfully built trans-boundary cooperation capacities, designed a coherent network of biodiversity buffer zones and established functional ecological corridors.

As an important Danube tributary, the Sava River is one of the largest water courses in the Western Balkans and contains a major complex of high nature value alluvial floodplain wetlands. The Sava’s mosaic of natural floodplains provide vital environmental functions as well as serve as cultural landscapes and natural defences against flood waters in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia.

No real coordinated management systems had been developed for the entire Sava prior to 2005, when the International Sava River Basin Commission was established. It was set up with a mandate to roll-out an integrated river basin management plan (RBMP) for the Sava, in accordance with the EU Water Framework Directive principles and LIFE TCY was engaged to help.

Some €601 210 of LIFE support was awarded to assist the RBMP process in 2007 for a three year project which focused on securing a sustainable balance between the region’s essential economic development needs and the wise use of natural resources in the Sava River basin. The project also received useful co-finance from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

Collaborative action

Working on such an international scale, in a region where environmental priorities were relatively low, posed a particular set of challenges for the LIFE team. Major obstacles identified from the outset included the:

• Lack of consistent capacity among local, regional and national authorities that would be responsible for developing and implementing the RBMP;
• Significant socio-political constraints caused by lack of awareness about the benefits and importance of environmental management activity;
• Deficiencies in, and differences between the different local, regional and national authorities legal frameworks, which dictate the types of actions allowed on the ground and at policy level; and
• Lack of formal communication channels between the essential stakeholders and a recent history of mistrust between key bodies.