Bringing politics back into water planning scenarios in Europe

Abstract

The shift from government to governance in European water policies conveys a pluralist conception of stakeholder participation in planning. This article argues that the current Driving forces-Pressures-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) approach to the planning of natural resource use, developed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Environmental Agency (EEA) is at odds with a pluralistic conception. The DPSIR approach consists in constructing a single socio-environmental model to address a specific problem in water management, while paying no attention to the existence of conflicts surrounding the definition of the issue at hand, the social, political and spatial delimitation of that issue, and the translation of stakes in terms of quantitative variables.Scenarios produced in this process therefore explore a limited range of policies, i.e. those 2 defining the problem in the same way, as illustrated here with the case of the Garonne River in France. This article presents an alternative method, combining knowledge in social science and natural determinisms to build contrasting socio-hydrological scenarios that do not share the same hypotheses regarding their respective key issues.The shift from government to governance in European water policies (Kaika, 2003) conveys a pluralistic conception of stakeholder participation in water management planning. It acknowledges that the allocation of water resources does not only revolve around hydrological expertise, but involves social and political considerations relating to the issue at hand, priorities, uses, compensations, restrictions, sanctions, etc. It requires that stakeholders who neither share the same values nor interests should have an opportunity to debate future options for the use of water. In this pluralistic perspective, scenarios can serve as strategic tools for discussing environmental water policies and plans of action, provided they do not presume a single definition of the issue.However, the prevailing approach to scenario building for water management planning in Europe often refers to the "Driving forces -Pressures -State -Impacts -Responses" (DPSIR) framework, which implies "the demarcation of a particular system of interest, with 1 The authors thank the journal DDT for authorising the publication of this amended translation of an earlier paper published in French: Fernandez, S., Bouleau, G., Treyer, S., 2011. Reconsidérer la prospective de l'eau en Europe dans ses dimensions politiques. Développement durable et territoires [Online], Vol. 2, n°3, December.

Panta Rhei 2013–2015: global perspectives on hydrology, society and change

“…Research practices embed and are embedded in particular social contexts (Budds 2009, Bouleau 2014, Lane 2014, Linton 2014. We need more empirical evidence to understand how culture, politics and economics shape water research and vice versa, and bring alternative knowledge and implications into water politics where they were not previously considered (Cook et al 2013, Fernandez et al 2014. Transdisciplinary research where certified and non-certified experts challenge each other agonistically counters potential lock-in to particular water policies and technologies that may be inequitable, unsustainable or unacceptable (Maynard 2015).…”

In light of seasonal climatic and anthropogenic changes, is the Vaud canton (Switzerland) vulnerable to water stress by the medium-term?

“…Menzel and Matovelle, 2010;Milano et al, 2013]. However, water needs often depend on factors relying outside the water sector, like policies, tourism economy and trade characteristics [Price, 1992;Fernandez et al, 2014]. To cope with this limit, Grouillet et al [2015] suggest analyzing the historical evolution of past water demands in order to identify the main factors affecting the temporal dynamics of water needs and thus better implement socio-economic changes in future estimates.…”

River Continuity Restoration and Diadromous Fishes: Much More than an Ecological Issue

“…For example, while a river catchment is a water administrative unit, it does not match the geographical scale of administrative regions, nor other issues which are relevant for territorial development such as the governing of agriculture or fish farming. Moreover, the definition of basin might vary depending on questions and mobilizations (Fernandez et al 2014;Bréthaut and Pflieger 2015). In this context of interacting scales in multiple dimensions, scale should not be seen only as an "euclidean distance" or "temporal-distance", but also as a relational concept which sees space as the result of sociological, ecological or biospherical relationships (Healey 2004).…”