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The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) in effect since 2000, mandates public participation in water management. The directive's requirements are general, leaving it up to the EU Member States to determine how to address the issue. Using case studies, this paper discusses some of the benefits brought about by public participation in water management. The cases are part of a collaborative project involving rural regions in six countries bordering the North Sea, aimed at gaining experience in the implementation of the WFD in rural areas. The findings reveal that working together with key stakeholders and communities has two main outcomes: improved quality and plan effectiveness; and increased acceptance and ownership of plans, leading to successful implementation.

Abstract:In the state of Israel wastewater management (WWM), the legal responsibility of municipalities, was neglected for decades, resulting in pollution of the scarce water resources and the environment. This trend was reversed during the 1990s. This paper analyses the evolution process of the national WWM regime and its effect on WWM at the municipal level, and explains the paradigm shift. It is found that both the long-term neglect and the paradigm shift can be attributed to the central government's policies regarding WWM rather than to the local authorities.

Household waste is a serious environmental problem in Indonesia, especially in urban areas. Since 2010, biogas production from food waste has been introduced to reduce waste and provided an alternative to liquid petroleum gas (LPG) as cooking fuel in a pilot project in Bandung. Although the produced biogas is sufficient, the socio-economic aspects can hinder application. This study assesses the socio-economic feasibility of the project in Cibangkong, a typical urban area in Bandung, which includes four bio-digesters. The results show that the conversion of food waste into biogas is currently not economically feasible, mainly due to the low penetration of bio-slurry-a by-product commonly used for fertilizer-into local fertilizer supply-chains. From a social perspective, community acceptance is mainly influenced by procedural justice. Furthermore, while the produced biogas is perceived to be quite useful in substituting LPG, it has not yet been fully utilized due to low bio gas pressure and several technical failures, which in turn influence community acceptance of the digesters. It is thus concluded that introducing biogas production from waste to improve waste management and reduce LPG consumption OPEN ACCESSRecycling 2015, 1 62 can be feasible when efforts to support the market uptake of bio-slurry, enhance biogas utilization, and improve procedural justice performance, are taken.