Management of Spring Zones of Surface Water: The Prevention of Ecological Risks on the Example of Serbia and South Eastern Europe

Society has been living long in conditions of local and regional environmental risks caused by the growing demands, falling quality and diminishing, absolute and relative availability of water resources. Ecological risks, but also poverty of most of the world’s population, are causes as well as consequences of the deficit of water resources. It has placed extremely complicated and complex tasks in front of fundamental and applied disciplines, social practice and different levels of political security decision making – how to solve environmental risks in the area of providing water, water protection, protection from water, fair distribution of water, problems of upstream and downstream interests in the basin etc. Previous practice shows that intensity adjusted interaction in due time between man and environmental risks, especially in these cases where basic problems are water resources, leads to the improvement of social organization and arrangement of space. By contrast, bad attitude towards water resources and systems for their control causes the problems in the development and decline of many societies. Although relatively rich in water resources, regions of South Eastern Europe (SEE) a high degree of ecological vulnerability. Recent growing potential of environmental risks in the area of water resources is caused by climate change and substantially inefficient transition of social system, and delay in the development of large-scale water management infrastructure.