Tor Haakon Bakken, Jo Halleraker
Background and scope:
Ecology-based sustainable development indicators (SDIs), which were uncommon three decades ago, have evolved as strategic instruments in many government's policy toolbox. Since the 1990s, increasing environmental concerns have stimulated the development of numerous indicators, based on solid monitoring. However, several studies on the policy interface from SDIs, highlight an in general weak or actually lack of real impact on corresponding action or policies, and several environmental objectives as well as UN SDIs shows a negative trend. The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) have been an obligation since 2000. For most countries in Europe, a second version of the River Basin Management Plans have been revised, and ecological conditions as well as pressure data have been reported for more then 100 000 water bodies. The main aim for this is to safeguard an ecological based sustainable use of water, e.g for hydropower, land use change and other drivers.
Hypothesis:
- Despite comparable use of SDI class boundaries, extensive effort in reporting, the use of exemptions and management practice seems to vary considerably, with an in general low level of ambitions towards a sustainable use of water across Europe.
- Justification or reason for business as usual (prior to WFD), and extensive use of exemptions leads to much less implementation of measures than the relevant articles in WFD have been designed for.
R&D questions:
- What is the main factors deciding upon ambition levels of reaching the WFD objectives in a selection of implementing countries?
- What is the determining factors for level of ecologically justified sustainable use of water resources:
- How comparable are physical alteration of water bodies assessed and mitigated?
- Are there indications of varying significance level for impacts and ecological effects?
- Do technical issues like e.g. size of water bodies play a major role?
- Do management traditions or political issues override more evident based ecosystem management?
- What can be learned and improved from SDI development and WFD implementation that are relevant for development of other ecological indicators for other ecosystems and regions?
Material and methods:
- Country-wise review of WFD implementation with recommendations from DG ENV (European Commision)
- Synthesis and analysis of the WFD reported date to WISE with main focus on;
- Nordic and alpine countries
- Pressures from land use and impacts from physical modified rivers and lakes
- Share of water bodies with improved ecology
- Extend of exemptions
- Comparison of natural vs heavily modified water bodies
