Giger, Walter

Panin, Nicolae

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ENVIRON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN ROMANIA—ESTROM • EDITORIALESTROM—a Romanian–Swiss research programmeWalter Giger & Nicolae PaninReceived: 26 May 2009 /Accepted: 28 May 2009 /Published online: 18 June 2009# Springer-Verlag 2009In 1990, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation(SDC) started a programme of scientific collaborationwith Eastern European countries. Since 2000, theprogramme has been known as SCOPES—Scientific Co-operation between Eastern Europe and Switzerland.SCOPES projects were principally based on bottom–upproposals by research teams from Eastern Europeancountries and Switzerland. In 2003, SNSF and SDCinitiated together with the Romanian Ministry for Educa-tion and Research a Romanian–Swiss collaborativeprogramme in environmental sciences with the aim ofproviding scientific evidence as a basis for policydecisions enhancing Romania′s transition process in thefield of environmental pollution reduction and thusdirectly benefitting the Romanian population. This specialissue of ESPR is devoted to this programme carrying theacronym ESTROM—Environmental Science and Tech-nology in Romania, which was finished at the end of2008. Summary articles of the nine ESTROM projects arepresented together with a programme overview and areport on the ESTROM International Conference held inSeptember 2008 in Bucharest.In addition, this special issue contains seven articlesthat are related to and broadening the frame ofESTROM in terms of contents (chemical pollutionEnviron Sci Pollut Res (2009) 16 (Suppl 1):S1–S2DOI 10.1007/s11356-009-0200-yWalter Giger Nicolae PaninResponsible editor: Walter GigerW. Giger (*)GRC, Giger Research Consulting,8049 Zurich, Switzerlande-mail: giger@giger-research.chW. GigerEawag, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science andTechnology,8600 Dübendorf, SwitzerlandN. PaninGeoEcoMar,National Institute for Marine Geology and Geoecology,024053 Bucharest, Romaniaand ecotoxicology) and a European wide scale. Thepaper by Walter Giger describes the transboundaryRhine River case study of a disastrous water pollutionspill in 1986 after a catastrophic fire of a chemicalwarehouse at Schweizerhalle in Switzerland document-ing the impact on and the remediation of the biota.The lessons learned from this immense accident can beapplied to other river systems such as for example theDanube River basin. The article by Frajo Wirtzpresenting the “Danube, Meuse and Rhine MEMO-RANDUM 2008” shows that there is a Europe-wideconcern of the waterworks associations. Five revisionsof the Rhine MEMORANDUM were published since1973 aiming at improving the water quality of theRhine. In 2008, for the first time, the Danube is alsoincluded. Thus, the knowledge gained in the Rhinecatchment is now being transferred to the Danubebasin. A European and even global scope is discussedby Maria Fürhacker in her paper entitled: “EU WaterFramework Directive and Stockholm Convention—canwe reach the targets for priority substances andpersistent organic pollutants?” This author concludesthat international mitigation activities provide a valu-able frame to approach the targets, but there is still along way to go to reach the targets on an EU level andon a global scale. Valeria Dulio and Jaroslav Slobodnikpresent the network NORMAN that is composed ofreference laboratories, research centres and relatedorganisations for chemical and biological monitoringof emerging substances. NORMAN was a networkproject within the 6th EU Framework Programme andhas now been converted into a permanent networkoperated through a non-profit association. Jürg Bloeschportraits the International Association for DanubeResearch (IAD), which is a transboundary scientificnongovernmental organisation presently consisting of12 member countries and 12 expert groups andcovering all water-relevant scientific disciplines. IADfosters transdisciplinary and transboundary projects tosupport an integrative Danube protection. Recent out-puts of IAD encompass, e.g., a water quality map ofthe Danube and its major tributaries, the SturgeonAction Plan adopted by the Bern Convention, hydro-morphological mapping of the Drava, a basin-widemacrophyte inventory and a Mures River study.Radmila Kovacevic, Ivana Teodorović and colleaguesreport on the first REP-LECOTOX Workshop under thetitle: “Ecotoxicogenomics: The challenge of integratinggenomics/proteomics/metabolomics into aquatic andterrestrial ecotoxicology”. This workshop was held inJune 2008 in Novi Sad, Serbia, providing a compre-hensive overview on the application of genomics-basedtools in ecotoxicology; it contributed to the popular-isation of ecotoxicogenomic and ecotoxicologicalresearch in Serbia as well as in the region. IvanaTeodorović describes the current state of ecotoxicolog-ical research and related legislation in Serbia andindicates that unresolved ecotoxicological problemsmostly remain beyond the reach of research currentlyconducted in Serbia. However, it can be expected thaton-going projects and institutional capacity develop-ment should increase the competence of the Serbianscientists.The guest editors very much hope that this special issueof ESPR contributes to inform a broad readership onenvironmental research activities going on in Romania andin the Lower Danube region, which have contributed andwill contribute further to political decision making. Conse-quently, we are confident that the ESTROM projects haveshown more than just findings of purely academic interestand make a genuine contribution towards solving waterproblems occurring in other countries.S2 Environ Sci Pollut Res (2009) 16 (Suppl 1):S1–S2

ESTROM—a Romanian-Swiss research programme

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ESTROM—a Romanian-Swiss research programme

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