Dniester River basin is a transboundary basin shared by Moldova and Ukraine. The river basin is the fifth biggest in the Black Sea region with the largest total area of the river basin in Moldova.
Dniester River serves as a drinking water supply sources for main towns located on its banks including Chisinau, the capital town of Moldova. An estimated 2.7 million people live in the Moldavian part of the basin.
The state of ecosystems significantly deteriorated during the Soviet era by intensive use of agrochemicals, uncontrolled water abstractions for different purposes, waste water discharges among others.
As there were no international mechanisms and tools for management of the river basin, practices that existed for the management of the Dniester basin are still not sufficient and strengthening of transboundary cooperation is crucially important.
To overcome these issues, European integration aspirations of Moldova provide a solid base for integration of the IWRM principles in the development of the planning documents and their further implementation in the Moldavian part of the Dniester basin.
Moldova needs to build up on past frameworks (institutional, legislative, etc) for cooperation in order to implement provisions of the achieved agreements on basin management. This will help to contribute to the cooperation with Ukraine in the field of water management.
The analysis showed up that technical and financial assistance from international and national institutions is a decisive issue to implement national and intergovernmental plans for management of the water resources in the basin.
Partnering with civil society, research and educational organizations helps to achieve broader consensus in decision making process and provide a good basis for cooperation.
Case study recommends improving institutional capacities of national institutions dealing with the water management through regional and international cooperation, attraction of best practices in different sectors of economy to the region, expert and information exchanges.
For more information, please contact Dr. Dumitru Drumea, GWP Moldova, drumead25[at]yahoo.com