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Read more below from our interview with geographer Dr. George White about Slovakia and the controversy surrounding the Gabcikovo Dam project.

[The Gabcikovo Dam] was a project pushed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and it had multiple aspects to it, one of which was to help provide energy for both Hungary and Slovakia. It was a typical Soviet-era project. It was huge, monolithic, major transformation of nature and a symbol of communism's -- how it was more successful than Western capitalism.

So that project began in the '70s and the idea was they would divert water from the Danube River through turbines that generate hydroelectric energy. But at the same time, it was potentially environmentally destructive. It would move 97% of the water from the Danube River through a concrete channel that could then be run through the turbines. And that has tremendous ecological implications, if you imagine moving the Mississippi River out of its channel, into the concrete channel a few miles away.

Hungarian scientists began to realize that there would be vast environmental consequences: pollution of groundwater tables, even surface water would be polluted, it could potentially destroy a habitat for animals. And there was another issue that downriver from the dam is Budapest, the city of two and a half million people. If there were anything to go wrong at the dam, you know, an earthquake, per se, not that this is necessarily an earthquake-prone area, if the dam were to break, it would flood a city of two and a half million people and kill an untold number of people.

And so what started to happen in the '80s, beginning with Hungarian scientists protesting that the negative impact of such a dam, they began putting pressure on the government to withdraw from this project which, in time, Hungarians through street protests, etc. pressured their own government to slow down on their half of the project so that by late 1980's, the Hungarians had only completed roughly 10% of their project while the Slovaks had pushed ahead, actually, and were almost 90% done. So this started to create tensions between the two countries.

So by the late 1980s, the Hungarians who were losing interest in the dam -- not just losing interest but were feeling threatened by the dam, were dragging their feet and had only completed about 10% of their part of the project while the Slovaks were about 90% done. It had become wrapped up in a lot of national issues as well where the Hungarians began to view this as a typical Soviet/Russian project to destroy Hungarian culture which is very different than Russian culture.

On the other side of the boundary were the Slovaks who were not very energy-efficient, so to speak, heavily relied on brown coal, which is very polluting, and heavily depended on the Soviets for oil. And so they wanted to see this project go through as a way of creating international interdependence and so it became national in the sense that the Hungarians felt that they had to stop this project and the Slovaks felt that they had to make it go through. And this is where the competition came in.

It became a little more complicated in the '90s, with the end of the Soviet Union. The Soviets weren't pushing it anymore, the Austrians became involved and started bankrolling it for energy because, ironically, environmental movements in Austria kept the Austrian government from building dams in Austria and so they returned to this project, which was only a few dozen miles to the east of them, so they wanted this project to go through. With the Hungarians not wanting it to go through and stopping [construction] the Slovaks came up with the option to just completely finish the dam and the whole project on their side of the boundary and whatever elements that the Hungarians were supposed to build, they just started building themselves on their side of the boundary.

So the Hungarians, being frustrated that they weren't able to thwart the project, took Slovakia to the World Court and ... the World Court has thrown it back at those two countries to come up with their own solution and that hasn't worked. So it's a pending case and a hostile point between the two countries.