Recently, public interest in the problems of the Dniester River and protected natural areas has intensified, but the necessary steps from the politicians and authorities are still not coming. With the protest being organized in front of the Parliament, the NGOs want to call on politicians to make real assessments of the threats to the Dniester River and take actions that will help improve the situation. The demonstration will take place on September 30th at 3.30 pm.
Since the Dniester is a transboundary river, the effectiveness of measures directly depends on the effectiveness of transboundary cooperation. “The river should not be perceived as a ditch with water, but as a basin, i.e. the territory from which it collects water, and as an ecosystem that includes all animal and plant organisms that lives in the river and on its banks,” explains Ilya Trombitsky from the network of river-keepers Eco-TIRAS and one of the organizers of the demonstration.
“The less disturbed the ecosystem is, the more efficiently it provides its services, such as high-quality water for drinking and irrigation purposes, biological resources, conditions for the development of tourism and recreation, adapting to climate change etc. International legislation says that no one water user should have advantages over others, and the interests of all should be taken into account,” Trombitsky adds.
Following these arguments, the NGOs suggest that politicians perceive the problems of the Dniester and that negotiations should be based not only on water needs, but also on the need to preserve the ecosystem of the river and its basin.
Problems with financing protected areas in Moldova
For many years, the nature reserves of Moldova, including those which have their administration, do not receive funding from the state budget. “Despite that they survive. But unfortunately, to get the money to be able to pay salaries to their employees, this forces them to, for example, sell protected natural resources, timber,” Trombitsky explains. “There is no other country in Europe where there would be such a practice. We advocate that nature reserves should be financed from the state budget. Therefore, we demand that the current parliament, when adopting the law on the state budget for 2022, provide funds for this,” he closes.
