Participatory Water Governance and Organisational Change: Implementing the Water Framework Directive in England and Wales

Abstract

Public participation is central to the IWRM discourse and often associated with claims of improved environmental policy outputs and their implementation. Whilst the involvement of nonstate actors in environmental decision-making has attracted scholarly attention from various angles, our knowledge is scant as to the forces that drive organisational reform towards participatory governance. This article sets out to contribute to this largely neglected research area and explores conditions under which policy-makers would be willing to attend towards more participative water governance. Its ambition is twofold: first, to explore the conditions under which public officials attempt to institutionalise more participatory modes of water governance. To this end, I analyse the implementation of the Directive’s active involvement provision in England and Wales. For many decades, water management in England and Wales had a reputation for being a technocratic exercise. In the past 15 years, however, the Environment Agency has made considerable efforts to lay the foundation for enhanced stakeholder participation. Second, with reference to the case of England and Wales, this study contributes to understanding the difficulties that reformers may meet when it comes to building support within an organisation and to implementing reforms towards participatory governance.

Implementing the Water Framework Directive and Tackling Diffuse Pollution from Agriculture: Lessons from England and Scotland

“…In this case, interest groups are more willing to be a constructive part of the decision-making process and to compromise in favour of long-term benefits and sustainability, especially if they see the decision-making process as a genuine opportunity to influence policy outputs. While different and innovative governance arrangements such as the CaBA have been tried in the UK, so far there is mixed or limited evidence that they have contributed to reducing diffuse pollution [43]. Published research findings in this regards are also in line with our own interview findings, as participants did not mention CaBA when discussing WFD implementation and diffuse pollution from agriculture.…”

“…Differences in the physical geography settings (arable farming is a more prevalent use of land in England) and the consequent importance of the agricultural sector presented additional challenges. This required a more decisive and cooperative approach from Defra and the EA in England to build consensus and fully engage with stakeholders [43]. The farming sector is hugely significant for Scotland: more than 70% of land is used for agriculture and much of this land is designated as LFA.…”

“…The WFD implementation process has attracted scholars' attention since its early stages [31][32][33][34]. The issue was studied from the perspective of various disciplinary fields [35,36] and with studies overwhelmingly focusing on assessing specific aspects of the directive, such as public participation processes in river basin management [37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44].…”

“…These studies generally linked increased public participation stemming from the WFD implementation process to increased quality and increased acceptability of policy outputs [39][40][41], while other contributions highlighted that important role of third sector River Trusts charities in creating partnerships with the EA [95,96]. In general, studies conducted in England concluded that in spite of attempts to try different and more bottom-up approaches, participatory experiences have been highly variable [97] and, further, this potential had not been fully exploited [43,74,98,99]. In addition, since 2013, the UK Government has attempted a Catchment Based Approach (CaBA) to foster active stakeholder engagement and to strengthen existing and newly formed catchment partnerships [100].…”

“…In addition, since 2013, the UK Government has attempted a Catchment Based Approach (CaBA) to foster active stakeholder engagement and to strengthen existing and newly formed catchment partnerships [100]. However, the CaBA did not replaced public participation practices under the WFD and this policy disconnect still remains to be addressed [43]. Studies that focused specifically on Scotland, tackled the WFD implementation from an economic [101] and cost-benefit analysis perspective [102], the latter concluding in favour of positive net social benefits resulting from the implementation of the WFD in Scotland as a whole).…”