Integrated Governance And Water Basin Management: Conditions For Regime Change And Sustainability (environment & Policy)

All over the world countries struggle with water stress. Problems vary from water scarcity and a degrading water quality, to floods and a rising sea level due to climate change. The European Union adopted a Water Framework Directive to improve the sustainability of water management in its member states. Water management should be coordinated at the level of river basins as a whole. Interests of various user groups should be better represented. River basin visions should take into account the impact of all human activities on the status of the resource. Water legislation needs streamlining and more focus on its implementation. The European Union advocates regulating water prices by charging the costs of water services on the basis of full cost recovery and the polluter pays principle. This book examines water management integration in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy and Switzerland. It is based on the European research project EUWARENESS. Per country two case studies are considered, to analyze specific regime transitions at water basin level during the last decades. The twelve case studies are discussed within their national context and compared on conditions that are important for regime change towards sustainability. The book also provides theory on water governance, institutional regimes, and property rights, resulting in a tool for monitoring the progress of integrated water management at the basin level in EU member states or other countries. This book follows another volume published with Kluwer Academic Publishers on "The Evolution of National Water Regimes in Europe", edited by Ingrid Kissling-Näf and Stefan Kuks. Front Matter....Pages i-xiv Governance of Water Resources....Pages 1-21 Institutional Resource Regimes and Sustainability....Pages 23-58 Harboring Water in a Crowded European Delta....Pages 59-98 Diverging Regimes within a Recently Federalised State....Pages 99-129 An Innovative but Uncompleted Integration Process....Pages 131-164 Redistributing Water Uses and Living with Scarcity....Pages 165-187 Competing Integration Principles in a Decentralising State....Pages 189-212 Rivalry Based Communities in Europe’s Water Tower....Pages 213-245 Integrated Governance and Water Basin Management....Pages 247-265 Back Matter....Pages 267-269