River Basin in European Countries

In the past hundreds years, humans activities contribute to an incredible advancement, which is always followed by enormous negative impacts on the river basin in European countries. One such region that has been impacted by human activities is the Danube Drainage Basin, which includes Danube River and the Danube Delta.

The Danube River is one of Europe's important waterways, it travels 2857km through or past ten countries, numerous urban centers, an agricultural valley. Therefore, Danube River is also classified as an "international waterway". However, human activities have caused many impacts, such as the change of waters regime and pollution in the Danube River. Human activities, such as drinking water supply, maritime navigation, agriculture, and tourism have caused the change of regime in the Danube River. The high waters regime has caused the floods, and the low waters regime has caused the drought and pond depletion. In addition, human activities such as dumping, littering, and domestic animal have caused pollution. Discarding materials directly into a river, such as car oil, trash, waste of livestock, and antifreeze, contributes to the extensive pollution. Extensive pollution has made most of the Danube river water unsafe to drink. Moreover, polluted water will be too expensive to purify. Although ICPDR has been established to sustain water management, control pollution, and control floods, it is unable to stop the Danube river taking a turn for the worse since only some states purify water from Danube tributaries.

The Danube Delta is the second-largest wetland in Europe and an important habitat for many rare and endangered plants and animals. Over 60 species of fish and 300 species of birds depend on the delta, including a major portion of the world's population of the endangered Dalmatian Pelican. Therefore, Danube Delta is a UNESCO world heritage site. However, altering the calibrations of waterbed, damming, opening new branches, and more of such human activities are an enormous impact on the Danube Delta. Human actions have caused disturbance to the environment or ecosystem in Danube, which results in detrimental ecological and environmental consequences. For instance, damming can destroy river eco-systems downstream, which directly threatens the life of 60 species of fish and 300 species of birds depending on the delta. In fact, human realizes the importance of the Danube Delta so that human has already done too much protection on the Danube Delta.

Generally, human has realized the negative impacts of their actions on the Danube basin. There are also many commissions and programs holding to protect the Danube basin. In fact, human has purified water and controlled pollution to protect the Danube River. And, many states also stop some factories working and restore physical and chemical parameters of the Danube Delta. Human has done what they can do to protect the