Review paper: a quarter of a century of the European Water Framework Directive — the slow path towards sustainable water management

Albiac, José (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Calvo, Elena (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Esteban, Encarna (Universidad de Zaragoza)

Resumen: The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) is one of the most analyzed environmental legislations in the scientific literature, influencing the water management in some non-European countries. The WFD has the strong ambition of achieving a good ecological status of water bodies across all river basins in Europe. However, the advances towards sustainable management are falling far behind the planned schedule. The emphasis of the Directive is focused on water quality rather than on water quantity. The advances during the last quarter of the century since its inception have been strong on urban and industrial point pollution, but not on agricultural non-point pollution that remains high and even increases in major basins. Water quantity aspects have been mostly left aside in the Directive, despite the fact that water scarcity is a serious problem in Southern European countries, and will become more critical with climate change in most basins across Europe. Some policy measures of the WFD need to be reformed, in particular measures for abating agricultural pollution, and new measures for addressing water scarcity. The narrow focus of the WFD on water pricing to solve at the same time issues of financing, water allocation and efficiency, environment, opportunity costs and pollution abatement, should be broadened. The challenge is giving more emphasis to command & control and collective action instruments, and designing combinations of instruments adapted to sectoral and spatial locations in basins. This overhaul of the water policy instruments by the European Commission will be needed to advance in the sustainable management of river basins in Europe.

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.1142/S2382624X24300019

Año: 2024

Publicado en: Water Economics and Policy 10, 2 (2024), [27 pp.]
ISSN: 2382-624X

Factor impacto JCR: 1.3 (2024)

Categ. JCR: ECONOMICS rank: 332 / 617 = 0.538 (2024) - Q3 - T2
Categ. JCR: ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES rank: 155 / 191 = 0.812 (2024) - Q4 - T3
Categ. JCR: WATER RESOURCES rank: 105 / 131 = 0.802 (2024) - Q4 - T3

Factor impacto SCIMAGO: 0.355 - Economics and Econometrics (Q3) - Water Science and Technology (Q3) - Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law (Q3) - Business and International Management (Q3)

Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MICINN/PID2020-115495RA-I00

Tipo y forma: Article (PostPrint)

Área (Departamento): Área Fund. Análisis Económico (Dpto. Análisis Económico)