The environmental history of the Danube River Basin as an issue of long-term socio-ecological research

Abstract

Only in a long-term perspective does the profound difference between pre-industrial and industrial society-nature relations become clearly visible. Longterm socio-ecological research (LTSER) extends its temporal scope significantly with contributions from environmental history. This chapter discusses the Danube, Europe’s second longest, and the world’s most international river, as a long-term case study. We approach the river as a ‘socio-natural site’, i.e. the nexus of arrangements (such as harbours, bridges, power plants or dams) with practices (such as river regulation, transportation, food- and energy-procuring). Arrangements and practices are both understood as socio-natural hybrids. We discuss how and why practices and arrangements developed over time and which legacies past practices and arrangements had. We emphasise the role of usable energy (so-called exergy) in the transformation of socio-natural sites. Since industrialisation, the amount of exergy harvestable from the Danube’s arrangements has increased by orders of magnitude and so have the societal and ecological risks from controlling these exergy-dense arrangements. The arrangements we have inherited from our ancestors determine the scope of options we have in the present when dealing with rivers like the Danube. Current management decisions should therefore be based on the firm ground of historical knowledge.