Wildlife Fund: Former flood areas to be connected to rivers

BELGRADE - The World Wildlife Fund in Serbia (WWF) released on Friday that a unified and more transparent approach needs to be taken on in flood management and added that the former flood areas need to be connected to rivers.

In the release, the WWF NGO in Serbia expressed regret over the large number of human and material losses in Serbia and the neighbouring countries and noted that all social, economic and environmental factors need to be taken into account in the search for long-term solutions and that the floodplain areas need to be connected with rivers.

Floodplain areas serve as natural reservoirs enabling storage of huge quantities of water which is then gradually and safely released to river courses and groundwaters, Director of the WWF Programme in Serbia Duska Dimovic said as quoted in the release. If the floodplains are cut off from riverbeds, their potential to withhold floods is reduced, thus increasing the risk of future floods, Dimovic said.

Natural solutions are much more durable, more efficient and they demand lower investments than building the river infrastructure, Dimovic said and listed several good examples of how protected areas may reduce the consequences of floods, including the special natural reserves Gornje Podunavlje, Obedska Bara, Koviljsko-Petrovaradinski Rit, Karadjordjevo and Zasavica, as well as the Lonjsko Polje Nature Park in Croatia.

The restoration of the natural role and water-withholding capacities to floodplains would alleviate the consequences of floods and reduce the costs of flood-caused damages, the release states.

The analysis of potentials for the recovery of floodplains shows that the most acceptable solution would be to recover the former floodplain areas and for...