
Water and Life
Water is vital, in its
quality, quantity, flow and location, to meet the needs of
ecosystems. These ecosystems include us- people. People cannot be
divorced from the water environment. Many of our activities, both on
land and in water, impact on water. They affect its flow, its
quality, its levels and its ability to support life. This life
includes tremendous biodiversity – water and wetlands provide some
of the most important habitats on earth. Equally, water and water
related ecosystems such as wetlands, provide us with essential
services – from potable water, water for agriculture, energy, flood
management, recreation opportunities, filtering and waste services,
fisheries and tourism.
Water and floodplain problems Our management of water
is becoming increasingly complex. Past practices have resulted in
the disconnection of rivers from floodplains – with a resultant loss
in biodiversity and a requirement for complex, expensive and
sometimes damaging flood defense schemes. Many of our current
demands are incompatible with each other. For example, we want
functioning floodplains for flood management and important
biodiversity, but people want to live by rivers and we need space to
build houses to account for changing demographics.
Intensive
agricultural practices can have detrimental impacts on water
quality, quantity, and levels that damage aquatic habitats. Water
companies and authorities, and thus consumers and taxpayers, must
pay to clean up water, that a subsidy or bad practice has polluted.
In many countries, the bureaucracy around water management is
complex and convoluted. Different aspects of water are managed
separately – for example, agriculture, land use planning, water
abstraction, water quality, flood management, drought management,
and portable water may all be managed in different ways with
conflicting objectives and different spatial and temporal
scales.
The Water Framework Directive and WUF The WUF project addressed
some of these aspects by focusing on the wise of floodplains in six
case study catchments across France, Ireland, Scotland and England.
It aimed to show how the wise use of floodplains could contribute to
the sustainable management of water within river basins and
catchments. It did this largely in the context of the EC Water
Framework Directive – a new directive that puts ecology at the heart
of water management in an integrated way.
The Directive
requires Member States to address all water problems that affect
water dependant ecology – and thus all water types – including
groundwater, surface waters (eg rivers, lakes and smaller water
bodies), and coastal waters. Wetlands are an important component of
the Directive and must be taken into consideration in a number of
different ways.
Member States
must ‘characterise’ river basins, that is identify the water
resource in each basin and assess its ‘status’. They must identify
the pressures and impacts that affect water in a detrimental way.
They must then set objectives for each water body, monitor these
water bodies and provide a programme of measures that will restore
or prevent deterioration of them – depending on the objectives that
are set.
The main aim of
this process is to achieve ‘good status’ for all water bodies
subject to some exceptions. This work is undertaken through a river
basin management plan. Very importantly, Member States have a duty
to actively involve interested members of the public during this
planning process. The Directive thus recognises that water is
heritage that must be treated as such, that water is everybody’s
business, and that decisions that affect water should not be taken
by governments or scientists alone.
A driving force
behind the WUF project was the growing realisation that many Member
States would have problems implementing the Water Framework
Directive, particularly in the context of managing floodplains more
wisely. The perceived problems related to a lack of techniques for
undertaking some of the required activities (eg, appraisal of
floodplain management options, engaging local communities), and
frustration in some countries by key players that the policy context
was working against, rather than for sustainable floodplain
management. The WUF was also a response to the problems associated
with the unwise use of floodplains – catastrophic flood damage to
people and property, the loss of floodplain wetlands, agricultural
subsides exacerbating problems, eutrophication and the heavy
modification of river systems.
How to use the WUF results The WUF project was
ambitious in its scope. This means that aspects of the results will
be interesting for different agencies and sectors of the
communities. The results are framed at different levels too. There
are major technical reports that provide all the analysis for the
major findings in four themes. There are also guidance notes that
provide a brief explanation of the four themes, and of the 4 Area
Case Studies. Where should you start and what should you
read?
You might simply
be interested in how to run a public participation event in a local
village for a specific water issue. For this you should read the
guidance note on participatory processes and then check through the
technical report on the same theme. Another organisation may wish to
do some hydrological modelling but not involve the public – and
would therefore only be interested in the hydrological result for
the WUF – the guidance note and the technical report. A community
leader might be interested to learn about what happened in the Erne
Catchment in Ireland during the WUF project and would simply refer
to the Erne Guidance Note. A national decision maker would be
interested in the results from the policy analysis - which show the
top ten policy messages that should be addressed and would refer to
the guidance note and the technical report.
If you are
interested in particular issues or case study catchments then you
should go straight to the following sections:
If you are
interested in how it all fits together, or you want to undertake a
similar process in your own catchment - then read on.
WUF – an integrated approach to floodplain
management The WUF project was a transnational partnership involving
government departments, research organisations and non-government
organisations (NGOs) in six project areas throughout England,
Ireland, Scotland and France. Five catchments were used as
demonstration sites to develop and test a range of techniques from
public participation through to the sustainability appraisals of
floodplain management options. These site were:
The sixth project
area in the Cherwell, England focused on methods to assess
the cumulative hydrological
effects of floodplain restoration.
The work done in
each of the Area Case
Studies ran along similar lines but was adapted to suit local
needs and circumstances. Much of this work will be required under
the EC Water Framework Directive although river basin managers
undertaking Directive work should also refer to any guidance
provided by their domestic governments or the European Commission as
the requirements are broader than the scope of the WUF.
The process,
facilitated by a project officer, ran as follows (this process was
not necessarily linear – many tasks were interlinked and
iterative)
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Mapping
the catchment on GIS (geographical information
system) |
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Identifying key water and wetland features in the
catchment |
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Identifying all the players with an interest or
potential interest in the floodplain |
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Identifying all the strategies, plans and policies that
related to activities undertaken in and around the
floodplain |
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Identifying the impacts and pressures on the floodplain
and related water bodies |
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Using participatory
processes to generate sustainable floodplain management
options including a vision and objectives for the
catchment |
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Using options
appraisal to identify the potential impacts of these
selected options |
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Undertaking policy
analysis to identify the policy and funding barriers and
opportunities to each of the management options |
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Selecting
options and developing action plans to take the work forward
where the stakeholders agreed this. |
This process was
a logical approach to floodplain management, which addressed issues
that were local (through local community participation), national
(through the policy analysis process), and international (through
the policy analysis process). In an ideal world, hydrological
modelling would have been undertaken as part of the options
appraisal in each case study area to examine the hydrological
feasibility of some of the selected management options. However, the
costs of such modelling were prohibitive in terms of the scope of
this project.
The outcomes The results of the WUF
project are complex and numerous. They are useful both for people
wanting to undertake this kind of work on the ground, and for
decision makers who are considering policy reform that affects
floodplain management. You should refer to the guidance notes and
the technical reports for the broad range of
recommendations.
The
recommendations are currently being taken forward in various ways by
the WUF partner organisations. Some are being fed into guidance
notes being developed by the European Commission and Member States
to implement the Water Framework Directive. Some are being used to
‘lobby’ decision makers in policy areas such as planning, water
quality, biodiversity, flood management, integrated catchment
management and agricultural reform.
People
undertaking various catchment initiatives on the ground are using
the results to help shape their floodplain projects. And
importantly, through not funded by WUF, work continues in some of
the Area Case Studies to turn the recommendations into real
action.
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