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Sustainable water management is high on the political agenda. Insufficient access to water resources and insufficient sanitation is one of the world?s major problems. All over the world countries struggle with water stress, not only in arid but also in humid regions. Water issues vary from problems with water scarcity and a degrading quality of surface and groundwater, to problems with floods and a rising sea level due to climate change. The European Union attempts to improve the sustainability of water management in its member states by means of the European Water Framework Directive, adopted in 2000. Water management should be coordinated at the level of river basins as a whole. Interests of various user groups should be better balanced by means of more public participation. River basin management should be based on a water vision taking 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 getting water prices right by charging the costs of water services on basis of full cost recovery and the polluter pays principle.
This book examines the integration of water management at water basin scale in six European countries: the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy and Switzerland. It is based on the European research project EUWARENESS (European Water Resource Regimes and the Notion of a Sustainable Status). It follows up to another volume published with Kluwer Academic Publishers on The Evolution of National Water Regimes in Europe: Transitions in Water Rights and Water Policies towards Sustainability, edited by Ingrid Kissling-N f and Stefan Kuks. While that volume focuses on the long-term evolution of water regimes at the national scale, this book considers two case studies per country, in which more in depth the specific regime transitions at water basin level during the last decades are described and analysed. The twelve case studies are discussed within their national context and compared on conditions that are important for regime change towards sustainability. This book also provides a lot of theory on water governance, institutional regimes, and property rights, resulting in an approach that could be applied as a tool for monitoring the progress of integrated water management at basin level in EU member states or other countries.ISBN - 9781402024818
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Pages : 269
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