Pol­ish gov­ern­ment wants to use Coro­na devel­op­ment fund for recul­ti­va­tion of the Zwis­chen­oder­land in the Low­er Oder Valley

Accord­ing to an arti­cle in the Pol­ish news­pa­per ‘Gaze­ta Gry­fińs­ka’ on May 11, 2021, the Pol­ish gov­ern­ment in War­saw, rep­re­sent­ed by the state water com­pa­ny Wody Pol­skie (Pol­ish Waters), is plan­ning the recul­ti­va­tion of the Pol­ish inter­me­di­ate land (Między­o­drze) in Essen­tial­ly iden­ti­cal to the Low­er Oder Val­ley Land­scape Pro­tec­tion Park (Park Kra­jo­bra­zowy Dolina Dol­nej Odry), to use the EU coro­na devel­op­ment fund worth a total of 750 bil­lion euros. The EU grant­ed itself this mon­ey on a debt basis in order to mit­i­gate the con­se­quences of the pan­dem­ic. These funds were actu­al­ly intend­ed for invest­ments that have some­thing to do with the pan­dem­ic, i.e. for cli­mate and bio­di­ver­si­ty pro­tec­tion, dig­i­ti­za­tion, health and oth­er future top­ics. As expect­ed, with this mon­ey, which the Euro­pean gov­ern­ments have approved freely, with­out con­di­tions and con­trols, 2,500 km of new roads and motor­ways are to be built in Poland alone by 2030, as the FAZ on May 17th 2021 report­ed (page 5).

With this mon­ey, the Pol­ish Zwis­chen­oder­land is now to be re-cul­ti­­vat­ed, which the World Bank, the Devel­op­ment Bank of the Coun­cil of Europe and the EU Com­mis­sion, orig­i­nal­ly planned as donors, had final­ly reject­ed because of obvi­ous non­sense. Now the Pol­ish gov­ern­ment wants to finance this project on its own, but would pre­fer to use the EU’s Coro­na devel­op­ment fund.

The area known on the Ger­man side under the name Schillers­dor­fer and Gartzer Pold­er was diked 100 years ago by the Pruss­ian state with Dutch experts and, com­pa­ra­ble to the Fid­di­chow­er Pold­er (Pold­er 10) on the Ger­man side today, was cul­ti­vat­ed. After the end of World War II, when these areas on the oth­er side of the Oder and Neisse rivers came to rest and thus became Pol­ish, this area of around 6,000 hectares was large­ly fal­low. The hydraulic engi­neer­ing sys­tems were not put back into oper­a­tion, the water could flow in and out depend­ing on the water lev­el of the Oder. A sec­ondary wilder­ness devel­oped. A sec­ond-hand wilder­ness, so to speak, that was so valu­able that it was des­ig­nat­ed as a land­scape pro­tec­tion park by the Pol­ish voivodeship.

The Pol­ish gov­ern­ment is now plan­ning to put this area back into agri­cul­tur­al use, to strength­en the dikes and to rebuild 33 inlet and out­let struc­tures. 80 mil­lion zlo­tys (around 17.5 mil­lion euros) are ear­marked for this. It now seems to be the case. The back­ground is obvi­ous­ly the hope of being able to col­lect EU agri­cul­tur­al fund­ing for this pre­vi­ous wilder­ness when these areas are tak­en back into cul­ti­va­tion. Poland has more than enough agri­cul­tur­al land to feed its population.

On the oth­er hand, it would be more sen­si­ble to allow this nat­ur­al idyll to con­tin­ue to devel­op nat­u­ral­ly with­out major invest­ment in costs and to make exten­sive use of the unique wet­land, a fen which is very impor­tant for cli­mate pro­tec­tion. For tourist use, a beau­ti­ful cir­cu­lar path around the Zwis­chen­oder­land could be set up on the old dikes for bicy­cles and pedes­tri­ans, from which one can won­der­ful­ly observe nature. Exten­sive canoe tourism is also conceivable.

In addi­tion, the Klützer Quer­fahrt, which con­nects the West-Oder with the East-Oder across the Pol­ish land­scape pro­tec­tion park, is to be dredged. Although it is locat­ed on Pol­ish ter­ri­to­ry, the con­struc­tion costs are large­ly borne by the Ger­man tax­pay­er. Then final­ly ocean-going coast­ers can dri­ve through the mid­dle of the Ger­­man-Pol­ish Inter­na­tion­al Park Unteres Oder­tal. Only one com­pa­ny, if any, will ben­e­fit from this mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar con­struc­tion project.

Third­ly, the Ger­man Min­istry of Trans­port and the Pol­ish Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment agreed in 2015 to expand the groynes on the bor­der or to a greater extent. The Oder then becomes nar­row­er, flows faster and deep­ens its bed. In the absence of water, nav­i­ga­bil­i­ty is unlike­ly to be improved, but the water table, which is already falling in East Bran­den­burg, will fall even faster and more strong­ly. This planned con­struc­tion mea­sure is not only a waste of mon­ey, but also eco­log­i­cal­ly counterproductive.

The Asso­ci­a­tion of Friends of the Ger­­man-Pol­ish Euro­pean Nation­al Park Unteres Oder­tal e. V. (Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion), as an active mem­ber in a net­work of prac­ti­cal­ly all large nature con­ser­va­tion orga­ni­za­tions, defends itself against the planned expan­sion of the Oder with eco­nom­ic and eco­log­i­cal argu­ments. The project is eco­nom­i­cal­ly unrea­son­able and eco­log­i­cal­ly a catastrophe.

At that time, the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion was the first to dis­cov­er the secret­ly pre­pared plans for the expan­sion of the Oder, made them pub­lic and, as the voice of rea­son, made them­selves heard by writ­ing to the World Bank and the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment. He con­tin­ues to see it as his most impor­tant task to pre­serve the remains of the sec­ondary wilder­ness, to devel­op it and to make it acces­si­ble for the peo­ple, res­i­dents and visitors.

The board of directors