Is public participation an added value for river basin management?

ABSTRACT

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) represents one of the most advanced pieces of water policy developed during the last decades. Since its introduction in 2000, several technical and political issues arose regarding this Directive and its implementation, and have to be managed by European Member States at the national level, but in strict collaboration with local authorities and stakeholders. Whilst several studies have analysed the WFD from a technical point of view, a few are available that assess and compare the quality of public participation processes in river basin management at the European level. The present paper shows the outcomes of an own-developed questionnaire sent to European water and environmental authorities during 2015, which highlights the variable situation in terms of stakeholders’ involvement and methods adopted to interact with them, and also points out the scarce results that the consultation has obtained in terms of innovative measures to fulfil the requirements of the WFD. In light of the present situation, a better consideration of public consultation and associated methodologies is necessary for future management cycles, as well as a better coordination between Member States sharing river basins.

KEYWORDS:

• European Union
• member states
• public participation
• river basin management plans
• stakeholders
• Water Framework Directive

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges Dr Christoph Gerstgraser and Prof. Geraldene Wharton for their help during the development of the questionnaire, and all the interviewees and authorities for sharing their experiences and providing useful documents.

The author is in debt to the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments that have contributed to improve a first version of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Michael Nones http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4395-2637

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Research Executive Agency, through the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union, Support for Training and Career Development of Researchers [Marie Curie-FP7-PEOPLE-2012-ITN], which funded the Initial Training Network [ITN] HYTECH ‘Hydrodynamics Transport in Ecologically Critical Interfaces’, N. 316546.