WWF Austria Chief Executive Hildegard Aichberger said: "The spring flooding (…) in the Danube River Basin has once again demonstrated that sustainable flood protection programmes require a comprehensive and integrated approach where efforts are attuned to and not turned against nature.

We have spent decades destroying our natural floodplains by erecting dams, changing the land use in the watersheds and accelerating runoff, but all we have done is shifting the problem somewhere else. What we need today is a complete turnabout in flood protection policies, giving more space to rivers and decelerating the water flow".

According to WWF, merely 20% of all floodplains in Europe are still intact. This gives even more weight to the numerous renaturisation projects conducted all over Europe, which have demonstrated that it is indeed possible to manage natural river landscapes in a way that supports flood protection efforts and to reactivate the previously existing floodplains.

WWF gives the example of the Loire River, where 6,500 ha of retention zones have been created and secured. The Rhine riparian states, too, have agreed on clear ecological flood protection targets across their borders. In Austria, by contrast, much effort is still required especially in the Alpine region, being most at risk for floods as a result of the climatic changes. Hildegard Aichberger criticised that the ecological flood protection potential for the Inn, Salzach, Traun, Mur and March rivers was still waiting to be exploited.

During the debates at the European Conference on Floods, Austrian Federal Environment Minister Josef Pröll largely consented with the WWF with respect to the damage caused by the floods and the crucial role of climate change. Yet he also argued that Austria was rather a role model for the rest of Europe in terms of flood management.

"Technical flood protection measures are indicated where absolutely needed; ecological flood protection measures (such as retention zones) wherever possible," Pröll said, using Vienna’s Donauinsel as an example for the first. There was no better illustration for the federal government’s commitment to take its responsibility seriously than the conference itself with its focus on the EU Flood Directive Proposal. It was no coincidence, he said, that the latter had become an issue during Austria’s EU Council Presidency.

Prime responsibility remains at national level

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas stressed that flood protection would remain a national responsibility also in the future. The Flood Directive was intended to foster transboundary collaboration with a view to preventing or reducing damage.

Dimas said the Flood Directive would require member states to adopt integrated flood protection measures, draw up a preliminary risk assessment, identify the critical areas in river basins and coastal regions with the highest risk, and compile the respective data in a cartographic mapping system. This would serve as a basis for developing a Community flood management scheme. Inland states would be forced to abandon their usual practice of shifting the flood problem further downstream.

Similar to the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), the future Flood Directive shall not be restricted to EU member states. Josef Pröll: "Once the Community has improved its joint flood protection strategies, the Flood Directive will serve as a docking station for non-EU countries which have a share in one of the large European river systems." The Flood Directive would thus also incorporate states such as Serbia into a Europe-wide flood management programme.

ICPDR Executive Secretary Philip Weller estimates that the Flood Directive has good chances to be implemented and may be adopted by the EU Commission already in the course of summer. According to WWF, the Flood Directive Proposal still lacks a clear coordination with the contents of the WFD.
(Source: aqua press Int. 2/2006, Mag. Christof Hahn)