Effects of Unplanned Space Utilisation on Water Resources of Serbia

Abstract

The activities of man have been concentrated around water resources since the dawn of civilization, water being his primary existential need and a precondition for all other activities, such as agriculture, transport or tourism. Only recently have water resources been considered in the context of specific and highly significant landscape value of space to be taken into account in space planning and management. However, in the Republic of Serbia, the last decades, considered transitional towards standards of developed countries in all social areas, have witnessed mostly unplanned development and the so called investor planning, having serious negative implications for water resources, space, landscape, and the environment. In addition to the devastation of landscape and water resources, there is also a reversible effect of water resources on space, such as frequent flooding, especially by rivers with unregulated riverbeds. Climate changes reflect in the changed distribution and intensity of precipitation, just contributing to the negative effects and processes. Space planning and activities in the areas rich in water should be complex and primarily based on taking stock of hydrological characteristics of space and their interaction with composite elements planned in the particular space. Such complex consideration of space in which the elements of the environment (water, forests, land, air, anthropogenic activities) are considered separately as well as in symbiosis, enables the management of water resources, space, and landscape in line with the principles of sustainable development. One of the basic planning measures in protecting people and property from floods is the spatial distribution of activities in the areas close to water resources in line with the hydrological and other spatial analysis of the wider area. Space planning in the immediate surrounding of water resources should be based on comprehensive hydrological studies and their integration in various space planning and management documents. The focus of such an approach to space planning should by all means be preventive protection of water resources, which can be realised in the planning process only by the implementation of strategic environment assessment as a universally accepted environment management document in spatial planning. This can be done by taking into account the broader context, including the analysis of the entire drainage basin in the first phase, and then the implementation of an array of planning measures and technical activities on the regulation of water bodies in the second phase. Since the largest portion of land in drainage areas of significant water bodies in the Republic of Serbia is forest and/or agricultural land, the process of planning should be directed towards the protection and preservation of sylvan and agricultural resources, and/or the improvement of infiltration characteristics and preventing surface runoff and land erosion. Taking care for the existing forest stands, new forest plantings, afforestation of steep grounds affected by erosion are but a few of activities on the biological regulation of river basins against the buildup of erosion deposits. The protection of forests include preservation and improvement of stands structure, their vitality, and/or management in line with the intended purpose of forests. It is the determination of sylvan stands as protection forests that is being considered the most important measure in preventing land degradation. Financial and educational stimuli in agriculture, directed towards defining and implementing anti-erosion and melioration land use methods, improve the infiltration capabilities of land and reduce the risk of surface runoff. Planting perennial cultures, the cultivation of land parallel to contour lines, and the enhancement of physical and chemical characteristics of land by implementing agrotechnical measures, are but a few actions with beneficial effects to preventing devastation of land structure and the incidence of surface runoff.