Economic challenges for the EU Water Framework Directive reform and implementation

ABSTRACT

The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) is a unique and historic piece of environmental legislation, combining ecological and economic dimensions. The aim of the WFD is to ensure sustainable socio-economic management of the resource, protecting the quantity and quality of water. The complexity of this political, ecological and economic framework has led to misinterpretation and implementation problems among Member States, and thus to unsatisfactory outcomes. This paper analyses the economic science challenges for the upcoming WFD reform and its subsequent implementation, and gives some recommendations about how to handle these challenges. Consensus is required on the definitions of the existing economic concepts and tools currently included in European Union (EU) water policy (through the original WFD) and the methods for operationalizing them. Additionally, this will help fill key gaps, such as the lack of suitably skilled practitioners and the need for homogeneous economic knowledge among Member States. Furthermore, it seems necessary to integrate additional emerging concepts into the water policy debate and its praxis in the EU context.

KEYWORDS:

• Economic science
• water policy
• reform
• European Union

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Julio Berbel http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6483-4483

Alfonso Expósito http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9248-4879

Notes

1 In December 2015, floods in the north of the UK forced thousands of families to relocate due to severe damage to their homes, with the economic losses estimated at around 6 billion euros. In Spain, meanwhile, drought status has been declared in the Jucar and Segura river basins since May 2015, which has led to an increase in the economic costs of water provision and economic losses for farmers.

Additional information

Funding

This research was financed by the Secretaría General de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación of the Spanish Ministry of Economy (MINECO AGL2014-53417-R).