The first national briefing seminar of the international EU project ”DriDanube – Drought Risk in the Danube Region” was organized on 29 May 2017 in Romania at the National Meteorological Administration. The seminar took place within the framework of the DriDanube project and was prepared by the project partners in Romania - Global Water Partnership Central and Eastern Europe (GWP CEE) and Romanian National Meteorological Administration (NMA).
 

The aim of the national seminar was to discuss the current state and problems of drought management in Romania, as well as the needs of practitioners. At the seminar were present participants from the following organizations: National Meteorological Administration (NMA), Maize Producers Association from Romania, practitioners, Global Water Partnership Romania (GWP), Research Institute of Pedology and Agrochemistry Bucharest, Institute of Geography of the Romanian Academy, National Institute of Hydrology and Water Management, National Forest ROMSILVA, SIVECO.

Opening speeches

Mr. Daniel Alexandru – National Meteorological Administration

Engineer Liviu Popescu – Global Water Partnership Romania

Presentations

Mr. Daniel Alexandru (NMA) – „DriDanube – Drought Risk in the Danube Region” & related projects with NMA (as partner): WATERCoRe , ORIENTGATE , IRIDA , CAMARO-D 

Mrs. Bianca-Florina Mircea (NMA) – „The green way to sustainable development” – CCVD project

Engineer Liviu Popescu (GWP Romania) presented the platform of GWP Romania organizations, IDMP programme and the contribution to the Dri-Danube project

Mrs. Anda Barbu (NMA) – „The Drought Management Plan – Monitoring, impact, prevention, adaptation” 

The participants have been familiarized with the DriDanube project and its offered solutions for increasing the capacity to adapt to climate change in the Danube region, protecting the water resources, reducing the flood risk and creating a Unified drought risk protocol. The presentations were focused on the current state of drought management in Romania and the problems it involves. Also, there were presented similar European projects regarding the effects of climate change on the agriculture and their actual results.

Practitioners emphasized in their discussions the need of farmers for a more detailed weather forecast adapted to the area of interest, which would include a set of meteorological parameters, such as wind speed and quantity of rainfall. Also, the issue of irrigations in Romania was raised and use of groundwater in irrigations. Representatives of the Maize Producers Association from Romania mentioned the existence of a study carried out by this Association which contains information about obtained yields for different crops and varieties as well as the crops evolution depending on certain parameters. This database is available on their official website. Also, a number of different studies were proposed, such as: a study that would highlight the drought effects and impacts on the crops, in the extremely dry years registered in Romania; a drought management plan correlated with the vegetative phases of the main crops from Romania; simulation of the evolution of water resources, presenting the drought phenomena, based on data collected by the NMA network.

The importance of constant communication and interaction between all the stakeholders of this project was highlighted as well as the necessity to disseminate knowledge in an adequate, concise and clear way.