TY - CHAP

T1 - Water Policy and Governance in Transition

T2 - The EU Water Framework Directive

AU - Kochskämper, Elisa

AU - Newig, Jens

N1 - Druckausgabe erschienen 2020, Copyright des E-Books 2021.

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - The 2000 EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) set a turning point in European water governance: mandated participatory planning substituted conventional top-down approaches, the ecology of aquatic environments became the WFD’s focal point, and the river-basin scale was institutionalized as the central governance unit. In 2007, the Floods Directive – a ‘daughter directive’ to the WFD – incorporated aspects of resilience through flood risk management. The two directives attempted a transition towards a sustainable and resilient water governance system; however, almost two decades later, it remains unclear whether the directives were instrumental in fostering such a transition. We report on several case studies in European water governance. These highlight the complexities of furthering change towards sustainability: institutional adaptation towards the new governance modes was slow and mandated participatory planning not instrumental for ground-breaking results. The European experience shows that adding more governance does not automatically bring about fundamental change.

AB - The 2000 EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) set a turning point in European water governance: mandated participatory planning substituted conventional top-down approaches, the ecology of aquatic environments became the WFD’s focal point, and the river-basin scale was institutionalized as the central governance unit. In 2007, the Floods Directive – a ‘daughter directive’ to the WFD – incorporated aspects of resilience through flood risk management. The two directives attempted a transition towards a sustainable and resilient water governance system; however, almost two decades later, it remains unclear whether the directives were instrumental in fostering such a transition. We report on several case studies in European water governance. These highlight the complexities of furthering change towards sustainability: institutional adaptation towards the new governance modes was slow and mandated participatory planning not instrumental for ground-breaking results. The European experience shows that adding more governance does not automatically bring about fundamental change.

KW - Environmental Governance

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/558dba3a-3449-30b7-add2-3101a248d3c1/

U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-48110-0_2

DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-48110-0_2

M3 - Contributions to collected editions/anthologies

SN - 978-3-030-48109-4

T3 - Water Resilience

SP - 23

EP - 40

BT - Water Resilience

A2 - Baird, Julia

A2 - Plummer, Ryan

PB - Springer Nature AG

CY - Cham

ER -