Projects & Grants




An Environmental History of Transboundary Rivers in Cold War East-Central Europe
Project IdGA24-11526S
Main solverViktor Pál, PhD
Period1/2024 - 12/2026
ProviderGrantová agentura ČR
Statesolved
AnotationTransboundary river basins shared by two or more East-Central European (ECE) countries experienced increasing water stress under communism. Although there has been extensive interest from the environmentally focused social sciences and humanities to study specific cases, ?hot spots? such as the Gabčíkovo?Nagymaros Barrage System, yet the scientific community knows little about how issues of transboundary rivers; most notably pollution, regulation and utilization were discussed and coordinated in communist East-Central Europe. This project is centering transboundary river issues around Czechoslovakia with a focus on the Oder river (shared with Poland), and the Danube (shared with Hungary) and it focuses on the analysis of politico-scientific, as well as popular discourses. The project hypothesizes that there is a specific ECE-based ecological dichotomy under communism in which the ?official? scientific and political discourses created strong parallel realities regardless of the actual ecological situations.