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World Water Day

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World Water Day in 2009 is dedicated to Transboundary Waters
World’s 263 transboundary lake and river basins include the territory of 145 countries and cover nearly half of the Earth’s land surface. Great reservoirs of freshwater also move silently below our borders in underground aquifers.
With every country seeking to satisfy its water needs from limited water resources, some foresee a future filled with conflict. But history shows that cooperation, not conflict, is the most common response to transboundary water management issues.
Over the last 60 years there have been more than 200 international water agreements and only 37 cases of reported violence between states over water. We need to continue to nurture the opportunities for cooperation that transboundary water management can provide.
We share the responsibility for managing the world’s transboundary waters for current and future generations.
In this respect state water agencies of the neighbouring countries Moldova and Ukraine which share the Dniester river basin together with NGOs Eco-TIRAS International Environmental Association of River Keepers (Moldova, Chisinau) www.eco-tiras.org and Black Sea Women Club (Ukraine, Odessa), organised the celebration of this international day on the peace of a beach of the transboundary Dniester River near the village of Palanca AGENDA. Many NGOs and youth of both countries, including Transdniester Region, participated in planting of trees and cleaning of the river bank. After the action participants took part in the celebration event which took place in the ancient Fortress of Belgorod-Dnestrovsky (Tyras, Akkerman, Cetatea Alba) on the bank of the Dniester estuary. The action was supported by The Odessa Oblast Water Dapartment, OSCE and Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in frames of the Center for Transboundary Cooperation (Tartu) www.ctc.ee and Eco-TIRAS joint project on management of transboundary Dniester waters.
The State water agencies of both countries have singed the appeal to the public of Moldova and Ukraine to save the river. RUS http://dniester.info/images/doc/letter_water_day.pdf
From their side, NGOs of both countries thanked the authorities for joint initiative of the celebration, but declared criticism of the authorities of both countries concerning a very weak progress in modernization of the water policy in both countries and especially in lack of political will to adopt and implement of the new Dniester River basin agreement which draft is prepared by governmental working groups with OSCE and UNECE in frames of the Dniester-I and Dniester-II projects already several years ago.
Detailed information on the event on site www.dniester.info