earticle

영어

This paper surveys the long-term change in the Rhine river management from the 19th century on. Since the Rhine is not only a German but also European river, this paper covers German policy on the Rhine as well as cooperation between European countries. This inquiry comes with two suggestions. First, the current river management is to remove all human intervention in nature as much as possible. The most representative one is the Rhine Action Plan which was introduced after the Sandoz catastrophe in 1986. RAP aimed not only at limiting the pollution of the Rhine, but also restoring the habitat surrounding it. This attitude toward the Rhine began to be applied to other European rivers as well.
Second, the history of the Rhine river management can be characterized by the continuing tension between the Rhine as a production factor and the Rhine as part of nature, the living organism, contrary to the usual perception that the radical change in the environmental policy took place since the 1970s. This essay tries to show how the small reformative steps, such as the German Water management law, took place and led to change in environmental policy. In German society, the environmental issue had a far broader foundation beyond the left parties, which enabled environmentalism to take root deeply in German society.