Chapter 9 River Basin Management in Europe: The Up- and Downloading of a New Policy Discourse

Transcription

1 Chapter 9 River Basin Management in Europe: The Up- and Downloading of a New Policy Discourse Sander Meijerink and Mark Wiering Abstract: River basin management has become an important steering concept in contemporary water management and governance. This chapter asks to what extent the shifting territorial focus in water management from the administrative scales of states, regions and municipalities to the multi-level scale of entire river basins or sub-basins, exerts pressure on the existing institutional arrangements. Using the concepts of policy arrangements and multiple venues, it will be shown to what extent the discourse of river basin management, and the institutionalisation of this discourse on the European level, have an impact on Dutch water management. The results indicate that changes are neither paradigmatic nor revolutionary, but fit in the more evolutionary shifts towards more, integrated, ecologically inspired water management, which has been going on for a few decades now. Keywords: European policy, policy arrangement, policy discourse, river basin management, up- and downloading 9.1 Introduction River basin management (RBM) has become an important steering concept in contemporary water management. Because of the many hydrological and ecological relationships within a catchment area, river basins are increasingly conceived of as Sander Meijerink Department of Spatial Planning, Radboud University of Nijmegen, PO Box 9108, NL-6500 HK, Nijmegen, The Netherlands S.Meijerink@fm.ru.nl Mark Wiering ( ) Department of Political Sciences of the Environment, Radboud University of Nijmegen, PO Box 9108, NL-6500 HK, Nijmegen, The Netherlands M.Wiering@fm.ru.nl 181 B. Arts et al. (eds.), The Disoriented State: Shifts in Governmentality, Territoriality and Governance, Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009

2 182 S. Meijerink and M. Wiering the best units for water planning and management. With the concept of river basin management policy actors strive for different ways of policy integration: between the management of water quantity, water quality, ground water and surface water (internal integration) and between water management and adjacent policy domains, such as spatial and environmental planning (external integration). Finally, in case of a cross-border river, there is a need for integrating policies of different basin states as well. Clearly, river basin management calls for co-operation between government agencies at multiple levels of government, policy sectors, and NGOs. The shifting territorial focus from the administrative scales of states, regions and municipalities to the scale of entire river basins or sub-basins, puts pressure on the existing institutional arrangements within the water policy domain. In many countries water management, and related issues such as safety and risk management, have mainly been the domain of domestic and national policy making. What, then, does the new perspective of river basin management imply for the long standing traditions and institutions in domestic water management? Is there a territorial shift from nation state decision making towards the international and European level, towards the (regional) river basin scale, or both? This question is at the heart of this volume that explores the relationship between territoriality, governmentality and governance. One of the most important advocates of the concept of river basin management in contemporary European water management is the European Water Framework Directive (WFD 2000/60/EC, October 23, 2000). Admittedly, the concept only partially fits in our ideal-typical description of river basin management with the three levels of integration, because at least in the Dutch implementation process it mainly focuses on the water quality and ecological part of water management and not on flooding management and other forms of quantitative water management. Yet, the WFD is generally considered to be a major change agent for water resources management across Europe. In this chapter, we will analyse what we call the uploading and downloading of the concept of RBM. It will be shown that both decision making on the WFD and the implementation of this directive are central to these processes. For our analysis of uploading and downloading we draw on two theoretical frameworks: the Punctuated-Equilibrium framework (Jones and Baumgartner 2005; True et al. 2007, for applications in the field of water management see Ingram and Fraser 2006; Meijerink 2005, 2008) and the perspective of Policy Arrangements (PA) (Van Tatenhove et al. 2000; Arts and Leroy 2006; Wiering and Arts 2006; Wiering and Immink 2006). Section 9.2 explores the possibilities for combining these frameworks in the analysis of up- and downloading processes. Subsequently, Section 9.3 gives a short introduction to the concept and discourse of river basin management. The Sections 9.4 and 9.5 present the core of this paper. They report on the analyses of the uploading and downloading of this new discourse respectively, where the analysis of downloading is confined to the Netherlands. Finally, in Section 9.6 we present some conclusions on the patterns of policy change in multi-level governance processes and reflect upon the implications of our conclusions for this book as a whole.

3 9 River Basin Management in Europe Combining Two Theoretical Lenses: The Punctuated- Equilibrium Framework and the Perspective of Policy Arrangements For our analysis of up- and downloading processes we draw on concepts of two different theoretical frameworks: the Punctuated-Equilibrium framework (PE) and the perspective of Policy Arrangements (PA). To start with this last perspective, the PA has been developed to characterise and describe both the existing institutional order (stability) and processes of structuration and institutionalisation (change) in a certain policy domain (such as flooding management, water quality management, spatial planning, agriculture, nature conservation). A policy arrangement is defined as the temporary stabilisation of the content and organisation of a specific policy domain at a certain level of policy implementation (Van Tatenhove et al. 2000, p. 54). The approach distinguishes between four dimensions of policy fields (See Figure 9.1): policy discourse (content), actors and coalitions, power and resources and rules of the game (organisation). resources/power actors and coalitions rules of the game discourses Fig. 9.1 The Tetrahedron, Symbolising the Interconnectedness of the Four Dimensions of a Policy Arrangement (Arts and Leroy 2003, p. 17, see also Liefferink 2006) These dimensions enable us to specify types of institutional change. What exactly is changing within a policy domain? Is there just a change of policy discourse, or have the rules of the game changed accordingly? Have new actors entered the arenas, and/or has the power balance between these actors changed? The concept of PA serves to answer these questions. Using this approach, Wiering and Arts (2006) analysed the implications and possible institutional impact of a discursive shift in Dutch flooding management, from the battle against water to living with water. The study showed how the new (somewhat ambiguous) discourse only had a partial impact on the organisational dimensions of the Dutch flooding policy arrangement. A rather similar approach to the institutional analysis of a policy domain is the analysis of governance patterns. In their account of EUpolicy implementation, Huitema and Bressers (forthcoming) make a distinction between levels of governance, actors in the policy network, problem perceptions

4 184 S. Meijerink and M. Wiering and policy objectives, strategy and instruments, and, finally, responsibilities and resources for implementation. Whereas the perspective of PA has proven to be a useful analytical tool for distinguishing various types of institutional change, it is not in itself a causal theory, nor does it focus on specific mechanisms of institutional change. That is why we have decided to include the Punctuated-Equilibrium framework (PE-framework) in our analysis of institutional dynamics in the European water policy domain. The PE-framework is a theory about agenda setting (Jones and Baumgartner 2005; True et al. 2007), which is aimed at explaining long term policy stability and (radical) change. The central argument of the PEframework is that policy domains can remain stable for many years because of the institutionalisation of a policy image or frame, which is often connected to the core values of a policy community. This is often called a policy monopoly (ibid). According to the PE-framework such policy monopolies do not last forever, since upcoming new and competing policy images brought forward by opponents of the existing policy monopoly may disrupt stable policy networks. But how do these groups of actors manage to get accepted their ideas, in other words to get institutionalised a new policy image? Here, Baumgartner and Jones introduced the concepts of venue change and venue shopping. They argue that opponents of an existing policy monopoly may strategically exploit the multiple venues within a policy domain to gain support for their newly fashioned policy image, and it often is the interplay between new policy images and policy venues that accounts for policy change. The added value of introducing the PE-framework here is that it sheds light on an important mechanism of policy change, which is the interplay between the discursive framing of policy issues on the one hand, and the multiple venues where the newly framed issues are placed on the agenda and addressed, on the other. We must point out that we make use of the terms uploading and downloading differently from what is common in Europeanisation literature, which is much more focussed on the specific role of Member states governments in shaping European policy according to their interests, institutional structures and traditions on the one hand, and to their institutional adaptation to European legislation on the other (Börzel 2002, p. 163). When applying the PE framework, we mainly focus on political processes at the level of European policy arenas and not on the specific role of Member states in uploading their own policy concepts and other parts of domestic policies. The case of Dutch coastal flooding policy provides an interesting example of such policy dynamics (Meijerink 2005). The Dutch coastal flooding policy domain used to be captured by the national Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management and an influential epistemic community of civil engineers (Meijerink 2005). Their policy paradigm of controlling the water by means of technical infrastructure was institutionalised in formal legislation, such as the Delta Act, which was adopted since the storm surge of 1953, and prescribed the closure of various estuaries in the south western Netherlands. From the 1970s onwards, however, a new group of actors, the epistemic community of the ecologists and environmental NGO s particularly, began to challenge the prevailing policy paradigm and managed to shape a new policy image. They claimed that the

5 9 River Basin Management in Europe 185 Rhine, Scheldt and Meuse estuaries are unique ecosystems that need to be preserved, and would be destroyed by the construction of large dams. So a breakthrough in coastal flooding policy was made possible. To make this happen, this new coalition of actors used strategies of venue shopping to get their ideas accepted. They launched their ideas in various committees, the provincial administration and the Dutch Parliament. Eventually, a new national government took on their ideas, and decided to construct the semi-permeable Eastern Scheldt storm surge barrier, presenting a turning point in Dutch coastal flooding policy (and water policy more in general). 9.3 River Basin Management Back to River Basin Management, we are curious about the route or pathway of the discourse of RBM, the influence of this discourse on the framing of water management issues, and on actual water management practices. Our central hypothesis is that RBM is a relatively new discourse which is promoted by specific groups who have an interest in changing water management practices, and who exploit the multiple venues on various levels of decision making to get support for their (new) discursive framing of water management issues (as issues that have to be solved according to the principles of river basin management). It will be shown that the concepts of venue shopping and venue change are helpful in understanding the uploading of the river basin management discourse to the European level, and the translation of the new discursive framing of water issues in a coherent and ambitious European water policy arrangement. This new complex of ideas and rules is finally dropped back to be picked up by the various EU-member states, thus affecting national and regional policy practices. Before we present our analysis of this dynamics of multi-level governance, we first introduce the concept and discourse of river basin management. Whereas in the past river management was confined to the main course of a river, and often focused on a single river function, such as navigation or water pollution, nowadays water managers try to adopt a river basin approach. The concept of river basin management emphasises the need to address the various interrelations within a river basin. Therefore, the basin scale is seen is the best scale for addressing river issues (Caponera 1992; Newson 1992). A river basin not only includes the main river, but the tributaries and drainage area as well. Very similar concepts used are drainage basin or catchment area. From the literature on integrated water management we borrow a definition offered by Jones, cited in Tucker Gilman et al. (2004, p. 3): [RBM] is the process of coordinating conservation, management and development of water, land and related resources across sectors within a given river basin, in order to maximise the economical and social benefits derived from water resources in an equitable manner while preserving and, where necessary, restoring freshwater ecosystems. Tucker Gilman et al. point at the integration of functional features of water and stress the position of water ecosystems as an essential prerequisite for RBM and not

6 186 S. Meijerink and M. Wiering merely as one of the stakeholders interests. Thus, behind the use of river basin management as a policy concept lie different layers of ambition. The integration of different parts of the water system can be described as (system-) internal integration; these system-approaches can have a hydrological (water system based) or ecological (eco-system based) bias. Furthermore, RBM includes the ambition to manage water resources across sectors in the context of river basins. This is addressed towards integration with other policy fields, such as spatial planning, agriculture, nature conservation, tourism etc., and is often categorised as external integration. Finally, as a river is not bound by geographical nor administrative borders, the third ambition is about crossing national borders in RBM (Verwijmeren and Wiering 2007). Consequently, the discursive shift from managing water courses to the management of entire river basins can be related easily to the hydrological reality of river basins, the various cause-effect relationships within a basin particularly. To put it differently, the discourse of river basin management is strongly related to what is perceived as problematic in river basins, from access to water bodies to water pollution or extinction of certain species and river floods. The modern concept of river basin management reflects the increasingly complex relationships between hydrological systems, eco-systems and mankind. It combines a system approach to water with a system approach towards ecological issues; it is an integrative concept towards various water policy issues and it is a solution concept that responds to problems of risk management (flooding). Moreover, the concept comes with a shift in emphasis from the territory of single administrative units, such as municipalities, regions, provinces and states, to the territory of a river basin. Such a territorial shift potentially has far reaching consequences for water management policies and practices. The need to address the various relationships within a river basin urges parties to start deliberations and negotiations with a variety of governmental and non-governmental actors. These either have an interest in the issues at stake or possess the resources needed for solving these issues. Exactly because these parties do mostly have different problem perceptions and interests, this is a troublesome undertaking. What compounds river basin management even more are the so-called upstreamdownstream power asymmetries within a river basin (Wolf 1997, Meijerink 1999). Downstream actors may face problems of water pollution, which are caused by waste water discharges by actors situated upstream. Moreover, they may face problems of water shortage which are caused by the diversion of river water in the upstream parts of a basin. Finally, they may face problems of high river discharges or floods, which are caused by deforestation and river training in the upstream parts of a basin. All these issues are characterised by strong upstream-downstream power asymmetries, i.e. the downstream parties are largely dependent on the willingness of the upstream parties to cooperate. For some issues, however, the power asymmetry may be the other way round. As an example, the maritime access to an inland port may be controlled by a downstream basin state, and for fish migration, upstream actors may be dependent on downstream actors as well. Upstream-downstream relationships explain why downstream actors, suffering

7 9 River Basin Management in Europe 187 from either a lack of clean fresh water or river floods, are often strong protagonists of adopting a river basin approach. 9.4 Uploading a New River Management Discourse: The Drafting of the European Water Framework Directive The European Water Framework Directive, by putting the concept of river basin management at the centre of water policies, is potentially a marking point in the development of water management in Europe. In the following, we will successively discuss the main elements of this directive, and analyse the process of uploading the concept of river basin management to the European level The European Water Framework Directive The WFD aims to harmonise water quality policies in European member states. The central feature of the WFD is the use of river basins as the basic unit for all water planning and management actions. Since the adoption of the WFD, the concept of river basin management has become central to European water policies. Moreover, the WFD explicitly addresses the need for stakeholder participation in implementing the directive. The WFD s overall policy objective is the achievement of good status and good potential for all of Europe s surface water and groundwater within a 15-year period. In contrast to preceding European water directives, the WFD is a framework directive. It does not contain detailed regulations on policy objectives for each water system, nor does it prescribe the policy measures to be taken. It leaves a considerable degree of freedom to Member states as regards the ways in which the directive is implemented. This, for example, concerns: The number of and delineation of water bodies (or sub basins) distinguished The classification of these water bodies as natural, heavily modified or artificial Giving reasons as to why it is impossible to reach water quality standards in 2015, and why obligations are postponed to 2021 or 2027 The implementation process is a rather open process of deliberation and negotiation. In this process national, regional and local government agencies and NGOs have to reach an agreement on policy objectives and the policy measures needed to reach these objectives. Once member states have drafted a river basin management plan with specified water quality objectives for the defined water bodies, however, the EU will supervise and enforce achievement of these objectives within the time frames indicated. This legally binding character of the framework directive confers a strong obligation on member states to live up to the river basin plans they have developed themselves.

8 188 S. Meijerink and M. Wiering The European Water Framework Directive is an important, though presumably not the final step in the development of an European water regime. In the development of this regime, generally three stages are distinguished (Kaika 2003). The first stage of European water policies, which covers roughly the period between 1975 and 1990, was characterised by directives which contain water quality standards for surface waters. These, for example, concerned the Surface Water Directive (75/440/EEC) and the Bathing Water Directive (76/160/EEC). In the second stage, from 1990 to 2000, new policies and directives, such as the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive (91/271/EEC), were aimed at reducing emissions primarily. The European Water Framework Directive, then, presents the beginning of a new era in European water policies. This era is characterised by the integration of sector based water policies on a basin scale, and by an increasing influence of non-governmental actors, both at the European level and at the level of individual river basins. This, of course, should be related to the more general process of political modernisation and shifts in governance. In the following, we will focus on this latest transition in European water policies Historic Roots and New Ecological Images of River Basin Management The concept of river basin management is strongly rooted in the United States and France. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), established in 1933, is an early example of river basin administration. In the Tennessee Valley the main objective was to train the river for economic purposes. Hence, the TVA was a very limited form of river basin management. Because of the recognised need to coordinate between upstream and downstream water users, however, and the establishment of a separate organisation for the entire valley, it still is a exemplary case of river basin management. France has an interesting tradition in river basin management as well. As from 1964, there are six large basin agencies (the Agences de l Eau) for the main French rivers. Solidarity amongst water users and the polluter pays principle have been important triggers for the development of river basin authorities with competencies to levy charges. Next to the recognition of the various hydrological relationships within river basins and the desire for solidarity among water users, the increasing awareness of ecological issues has been an important trigger for the territorial shift in contemporary water management. The epistemic community of ecologists and biologists contributed much to the diffusion of knowledge about river ecosystems and the need of ecosystem oriented water management. This community managed to shape a new policy image of rivers. Rivers were no longer framed as an economic resource to be exploited be human beings, but as a natural resource representing unique ecological values that need to be preserved. Discharge of pollutants, geomorphologic disturbances, canalisation, and diversion of water may all have a negative impact on the entire river ecosystem. Therefore, water management issues should be dealt with on a basin scale. In Europe, the discourse

9 9 River Basin Management in Europe 189 of river basin management gained prominence in the 1980s and 1990s of the 20th century. It is an interesting question as to how the protagonists of a river basin approach and ecosystem oriented water management managed to influence the agendas of policy makers, and how the river basin management discourse has affected policy practices. In the following, we will focus on the process preceding the adoption of the EU water framework directive The Exploitation of Venues and Changing Decision Making Rules Kaika (2003) and Kaika and Page (2003) have made a detailed account of decision making on the European Water Framework Directive. They focused particularly on the impact of the changing decision making rules on the European level, and newly created opportunities for NGOs to influence European decision making. The Amsterdam Treaty, signed on 17 June 1997, came into force on 1 May It significantly altered decision making rules on most environmental issues in the European Union. Whereas in the past, the Council of Environmental Ministers (CM) had a primacy over the European Parliament (EP), as from 1999 environmental policymaking is a co-decision process between the CM and EP, which implies a shifting power balance in favour of the EP. The CM had no choice but to negotiate draft proposals for the WFD with the EP (Kaika 2003). The EP, whose members are not directly connected to individual member states, was more inclined to adopt new legally binding environmental policies than the CM whose members primarily tried to serve the economic interests of their respective countries. The EC (European Commission), CM and EP are the three crucial venues on the European level. NGOs focussing on European political decision making employed different strategies to influence decisions in these venues. Kaika (ibid.) argues that the NGOs representing economic interests mainly lobbied at the national levels, and with that tried to influence the opinion of the Ministers representing their country in the CM. The lobby of the environmentalists, however, was not only directed at the national governments, but at influencing decision making in the European venues as well. Several environmental NGOs had established good contacts within both the Brussels bureaucracy, DG Environment particularly, and the European Parliament, and therefore managed to influence decision making in these forums. Environmental NGOs successfully lobbied for a much tighter implementation scheme, stricter standards for some dangerous substances, and new obligations for member states to involve NGOs and the public in the drafting of river basin plans. Kaika and Page (2003) are rightly asserting that the change of decision making rules at the European level, and the increased possibilities for environmental NGOs to influence European environmental policies, are crucial to an understanding of the development of the WFD. This not to say, however, that individual

10 190 S. Meijerink and M. Wiering member states have not played an important role in the drafting of the WFD. As regards the development of European environmental policies, often a distinction is made between forerunners, such as Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark, and foot-draggers, such as Portugal, Greece, Spain, Italy and Ireland (Börzel 2002). Although this distinction roughly applies to the development of new water quality policies, there is an important difference. Because of the upstream-downstream relationships and interdependencies within international river basins, the member states position within these basins influences their position in the debate as well. In general, downstream basin states, such as the Netherlands or Portugal are strong protagonists of river basin management, whereas typical upstream basin states, such as Spain, often show less interest in new obligations. The Netherlands are situated within the delta of four international rivers, the Rhine, Meuse, Scheldt and Ems. For river issues, such as water pollution, sediment contamination, water distribution and flood control, the Dutch are largely dependent on the co-operation of the upstream basin states, such as Germany, Belgium and France. Not surprisingly, the Dutch have always been strong protagonists of the development of international regimes for the management of these rivers. They deliberately tried to influence decision making in the various bilateral and multilateral negotiation commissions in which international river issues were discussed. In the Rhine basin, the riparian states have been rather successful in developing a set of international agreements dealing with issues, such as navigation, water pollution, ecological rehabilitation and flood control. The international Rhine regime is generally considered to be a good example of international river basin management. The Dutch, however, also tried to influence negotiations over the UN-ECE convention on the protection and use of transboundary water courses and international lakes (Meijerink 1999). The concept of river basin management was central to this convention. By signing this convention, the contracting parties obliged themselves to take part in negotiations over international river issues, and to allow for all basin states to take part in these negotiations. Because of their strong interest in solving international disputes over the management of the Rhine, Scheldt, Meuse and Ems rivers, the Dutch were strong protagonists of the European Water Framework Directive as well. The Dutch interest, however, was not so much in changing governance practices in the Netherlands, but in creating new legal obligations for upstream basin states to clean-up their waters, and to take into account the impact of their actions for downstream basin states. 9.5 Downloading the New European River Discourse: The Implementation of the European Water Framework Directive in The Netherlands In our introduction we posed the question what the new perspective of river basin management implies for the long standing traditions and institutions in domestic water management. In this section, we will investigate the downloading of

11 9 River Basin Management in Europe 191 the new European water management discourse and regulations by exploring the implementation of the WFD in the Netherlands, and how it affected the development of RBM. Applying the PAA, RBM can be considered as an integrative river management discourse which is accompanied by new rules of the game (stemming from the European Directive). The discussion will follow the four PAA dimensions distinguished above The Dimension of Policy Discourse The first question that has to be answered is whether the WFD changes domestic water policy discourse. As we saw before, river basin management is a concept which includes an integrative system-based approach and is strongly ecologically and water quality focussed (see Section 9.2). Is it new for the Dutch? The Netherlands already initiated the idea of a water system approach in the 1970s, while struggling with decisions on building the famous Delta works. It was introduced as an official policy principle in the mid-1980s and was further elaborated in governmental policies in the 1990s (Van Leussen 2002; Wiering and Crabbé 2006). Thus, a system approach is not alien to Dutch water policy making and the WFD-RBM discourse is supporting these concepts of system management. The WFD is stressing the importance of environmental and ecological elements of water policy and is thus fostering the ecological turn in water management (see Disco 2002). Here again the WFD is reinforcing existing developments in Dutch water policy The most important incentive is not so much the change in policy goals or programmes itself, but the integrative and suggested binding character of (environmental) water quality obligations as a result of the Directive and the necessity to put them on societal and political agendas. Thirdly, putting things in a broader institutional context, the WFD was staged in a time wherein other water related issues, such as flooding and space for rivers -concepts where setting the Dutch water scene. The WFD touches upon certain water quantity elements, but not all water related issues, and is not fully water system oriented (as we have already stated in the introduction). It follows that the WFD-implementation is partly accompanied by other important Dutch policy programmes such as Water Policy 21st Century, in which separate obligations and tasks towards sub-river basin management plans were formulated but now from the perspective of water quantity issues. In short, recent water management practices in the Netherlands clearly are inspired by the discourse of river basin management, but we should bear in mind that these practices have developed rather autonomously, and are not always the results of European water policies. So far, the prospect of substantial institutional change is limited. On the other hand, we may expect that the accompanying new rules of the game of the WFD, do have an impact on policy practices.

12 192 S. Meijerink and M. Wiering The Dimension of Policy Actors and Coalitions Wiering and Arts (2006) give three indicators of institutional change in this dimension: Do we see new players entering in the policy field? Are there new interaction patterns or new organisational relationships between (new and) existing policy players? Are there structuring processes towards new policy coalitions in the field? Before analysing institutional change here, we must give a short notion of the existing policy arrangement. Traditionally, Dutch water management is dominated by a relatively autonomous layer of functional administration, the water boards (going back to the 12th century), which watch over regional surface water management both water pollution and flooding management. On the national level, the 200-years-old Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat) is responsible for the main state water system and infrastructure of large rivers, canals, coastal waters and estuaries (Kuks 2004, Wiering and Immink 2006). Next to these players, the provinces and municipalities also have specific tasks. This suggests that the water policy organisations have their own functional policy domain in which water system approaches have been important for many years. The last few decades a remarkable strong restructuring and upscaling of the important regional water boards has been taken place creating larger units of organisation. The amount of water boards decreased from 2,500 in the 1950s to 255 in 1985 and about 27 regional water boards nowadays. So, are there new players or new coalitions in the field? When we look at the actual implementation of the WFD we could say that the WFD is creating soft organisational structures which are geared towards river basin management plans, but all of this is absolutely within the bounds of the existing Dutch organisational framework. In other words, there are no new organisations initiated because of the WFD or the concept of RBM, there is no new organisational hardware implemented. Another crucial element of the river basin management-discourse is the idea that the boundaries of river basins do not coincide with the boundaries of nation states, which calls for a strong coordination between efforts made by the various basin states. Although this sounds self evident, we do not witness, in the context of this analysis, a strong shift towards international cross-border co-operation in water management. Until now, the nation states have been concentrating on the new tasks and responsibilities within their own national and regional realms, while further cross-border fine-tuning, co-operation and co-policy making still seem a bridge too far (Verwijmeren and Wiering 2007). In the East of the Netherlands, bordering Germany, the WFD- process created a river basin district crossing national borders (the sub-river basin Rhine East). Although they are part of the same river basin, we find differences in the pace and WFDcategorisations in The Netherlands and Germany (Van Leussen et al. 2007).

13 9 River Basin Management in Europe 193 Is there substantive change in interaction patterns between organisations in the field and do we see changing policy coalitions? On this part it is difficult to judge the exact implications of RBM and the WFD. The WFD (in the Dutch context) explicitly focuses on water quality and the ecological state of water bodies; it follows that the frequency of relationships between the functional water management organisations and both the nature conservation departments at different administrative levels and the environmental and nature conservation NGOs will increase. Besides the general ecological sensibility of Dutch water management, we indeed, gradually, see initiatives towards connecting water policy with nature conservation, but we cannot yet consider these initiatives to be structural. Also on the part of new policy coalitions we see the potential for new coalitions between water policy agents, the environmentalist and the nature conservation agents, but do not really see it happening on a larger scale. So what we observe is that the administrative units encompass larger parts of Dutch river basins and regional water boards are further emancipating, so we can conclude that the administrative structures more and more fit the scale of river basins. In this dimension we clearly see a form of rescaling of the organisational structure, and some indirect impact, but it cannot directly be related to the downloading of the river basin management discourse through the WFD as such And Shifting Resources? Turning to the dimension of power and resources, the WFD (in due time) will give (more) incentives and resources to those policy actors that are working on different environmental and nature-conservation policy programmes. These programmes aim at combining water quality and water quantity issues (groundwater levels), nature conservation and development in river surroundings, ecological networks, riverine ecosystems and biodiversity goals. It can be expected that policy actors simply need more knowledge of this dimension of the water ecosystem; e.g. the effects of ground water levels on chemical and ecological quality of water bodies, to mention just one issue (Milieu en Natuurplanbureau 2006). The WFD contains various obligations for the European member states. States, for example, have to set the boundaries of water bodies; they have to define water quality standards, and have to develop an implementation scheme. As such, the framework induces a change in the power balance in favour of the protagonists of river basin management. They can use the WFD to make other parties work in accordance with the principles of river basin management. To sum up, we can foresee that the ecology of river basins will be an issue of increasing importance, and resources will go in this direction. This points at evolutionary changes towards a continuing integrative and system oriented ecological turn in water policy rather than major changes in existing actor coalitions.

14 194 S. Meijerink and M. Wiering Changes in Rules of the Game The fourth and last dimension we will discuss is that of changes in the rules of the game of Dutch water management. Because the WFD not only introduces a policy discourse, but also a set of new rules and legislation, we find more explicit implications in the rules -dimension. We will go into the changes in the formal rules that are brought about by the implementation process and we will try to envisage the expected procedural and informal changes in interaction rules in the field as well. At the moment, the WFD is implemented in the Dutch legislative framework by a separate WFD Implementation Act (Implementatiewet KRW; TK , , Nos. 1 3; EK , A) that is put into force on 22nd June 2005 and which draws the main objectives and principles of the WFD (Driessen and Van Rijswick 2006). This transitional legislation is directed towards the implementation of the Directive s goals, mainly through using the existing Dutch framework, the Water Management Act (Wet op de Waterhuishouding). Existing organisational structures and formal responsibilities will not be changed. But on the long term the Dutch water legislation is restructured and reframed towards a new integrated legislation, the Integrated Water Act (Integrale Waterwet). This Act, which is an institutional novelty, will focus on the ambitions of river basin management and water system approaches. It is expected to make the organisational structures more transparent and to create adequate and efficient policy instruments for implementing water policies. It will, in the end, replace eight existing regulations on separate water issues, both water quality and water quantity, thus reduce rule fragmentation and foster integrated water resources management (Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management/RIZA 2004; Van Rijswick 2003a, b). Accordingly, this integrated Water Act is institutionalising the discourse of river basin management, with an emphasis on the integrative ambitions of the concept. When it comes to informal and procedural rules of the game in water management, we see both internal and external integrative tendencies. In concrete policy practises the WFD is more important for internalising system-thinking than we would find at first glance. The WFD stimulates discussions on the internal administrative organisation of water management and is used as an argument to make the whole of the water legislation more system-oriented. On the ambitions concerning the external integration of water issues, we must look at the changing relationships between water management and other policy fields, such as spatial planning, agriculture, nature conservation and tourism. Discussions on the role of water issues in spatial planning are highly relevant here, as we already stressed elsewhere (Wiering and Immink 2006). The external ambition of the water policy field is targeted at making water a much more fundamental guiding principle in spatial planning than is the case now. In Dutch spatial planning, water issues are seen as important, but only a basic planning principle and not as a necessary pre-condition for spatial planning (Wiering and Immink 2006, p. 75). Furthermore,

15 9 River Basin Management in Europe 195 new policy practises show changes in interaction patterns between water management and spatial planning, but these are not stemming from the concept of RBM related to the WFD, but from the programme that originated from the water quantity and flooding part of the water problem (the Water Management in the 21st Century policy programme). One of these new procedural instruments is named the water survey (Watertoets), and consists of a sort of Water Impact Assessment for spatial plans (Wiering and Immink 2006, p. 75). Again, the concept of RBM is not new in stimulating external integration towards other policy fields but together with the potential and suggested big stick of European legislation it encourages the different policy actors to discuss basic view points and goals relating water issues and other activities in the river basin. Besides this all, the WFD also has governance -implications as it specifically asks for public consultation on its program and targets (WFD article 14). This can in the long run produce a change in the way water authorities inform and consult the public. At this moment, however, these processes of participation have hardly been started, and it is our perspective that the broader public is hardly aware of the sometimes heated discussions between the involved stakeholders in the WFD. To conclude this section on the downloading of the concept of river basin management, we can summarise some of our findings: the discourse of RBM is not really new in the Dutch context. What is new is the comprehensive, integrative and suggested binding character of (environmental) water quality obligations. The RBM-discourse thus reinforces the holistic and scientific water system approaches and the ecological turn in water management. The WFD gives it substance. On the organisational dimension of actors and coalitions, we find in recent years a strong up-scaling of water boards in accordance with the idea of administrative units for river basins. But, on the other hand, we witness no new organisational hardware in this dimension, as the existing functional framework is reproduced. We see possibilities for new interactions between water, environment and nature conservation, but no signs of new policy coalitions yet. We see potential resources for new ecological research ahead, but important shifts in the water knowledge infrastructure are not expected (compare Wiering and Arts 2006). The strongest forms of institutional change can be found in the rules of the game -dimension: the implementation of the WFD is accelerating the process of integration of fragmented water legislation towards an Integrated Water Act. 9.6 Conclusions The discourse of river basin management clearly has gained prominence in European water management in the past decade. It draws our attention to the need for a coherent management of hydrological units, i.e. taking account of the relationships between water quality, water quantity, groundwater and surface water, upstream-downstream relationships, and land-water interactions. For realising such a coherent management, co-operation is needed between a wider range of

16 196 S. Meijerink and M. Wiering government agencies, NGOs and citizens, and if necessary cross border cooperation. The WFD, adopted in 2000, on the one hand reflects this new discourse on the management of (shared) water resources, on the other hand stimulates the further dissemination and realisation of these ideas. River basin planning is an essential feature of the new European water policies, and the need for co-operation between basin states, government agencies, NGOs, and the public is recognised and expressed. How, then, has the discourse of river basin management reached the European level? In other words: how can we account for the uploading of this discourse? New ideas and discourses need an agent for being transmitted to decision makers. Our review of decision making on the WFD has shown that downstream basin states, the epistemic community of ecologists and environmental NGOs have been important change agents. They all tried to get their ideas accepted of a more ecosystem oriented water management. Moreover it was shown how some of these agents have successfully exploited the multiple venues on the European level as well as the changing decision making rules. These observations are in line with the results of earlier research (Richardson 2000), which has shown that the multiple venues within a policy domain are an important resource for interest groups. The analysis also corroborates a central argument of the Punctuated-Equilibrium framework. According to Jones and Baumgartner (2005), it is the interaction between a policy image (the discursive framing of a policy issue) and venues that accounts for policy change. In our case, the interaction between the strong discursive framing of water management issues (river basin management as a comprehensive solution concept to different problems) and the impression of an open process Directive in combination with strategic use of multiple venues on the European level, turned out to be important mechanisms of policy change. The new European water policy arrangement comprises a complex new set of rules of the game for water management in Europe, the most important being the obligations to draft river basin management plans, and to define water quality objectives that will have to be achieved in All this means that at least at the level of the policy discourse both an Europeanisation process and an areaisation process (at the level of river basins) have taken place in water management, potentially implying certain forms of de- and re-territorialisation. For a better understanding of the actual impact of these new discourses and rules of the game on the European and river basin levels, we have taken a closer look at the implications of the European Water Framework Directive and the RBM -discourse in the Netherlands so far. In Section 9.5 we have applied the policy arrangement approach to changing institutions in the content and organisations of Dutch water management. The RBM-discourse has further stimulated the system approaches and ecological notions in water management. The upscaling of the water boards fits perfectly with the idea of river basin -based administrative units, although this upscaling was a highly autonomous process in Dutch public administration. We have found that the RBM-discourse is used, almost as a resource, to de-fragmentise Dutch water legislation in an already existing process of integrating water rules and regulations. Not withstanding these developments,

17 9 River Basin Management in Europe 197 we see, on the other hand, no new actors entering the policy stage and relatively marginal changes in organisational structures, resources and policy coalitions. Let us now turn to one of the pressing questions in the introduction: is Dutch water management in territorial terms shifting towards supranational levels or towards the river basin region, or both? As is the case in other policy fields and with other issues, it is useful to distinguish between the level of norm-setting and the level of actual implementation; rules and regulations concerning the normsetting are clearly being harmonised with the implementation process of the European WFD; although the EU-Directive is not as top down oriented as some of its predecessors, it forces the member states to formulate their own ambitions in water quality management, and furthermore, hold them to their promises. In the actual carrying out of the water policies the role of the regional water boards is increasing, due to its upscaling. Some of the water boards are already larger in size than the provinces and have to coordinate provincial policies. But in the WFD implementation process decentralised authorities are also staring at the national authorities in expectation of answering questions on at what level national ambitions are set in water quality management. We also conclude with some words on actual ambitions of the Dutch implementation process. The Netherlands has a strong international reputation in water management. As a downstream basin state, situated in the delta of the Rhine, Scheldt and Meuse rivers, the Dutch have always pleaded for more and better international co-operation on the management of these rivers. It is interesting, however, that the Dutch face serious problems with implementing the WFD now. A first reason for that is that water pollution is not leading on the societal and political agendas. Understandably, after the (near) river floods of 1993 and 1995, and with climate change ahead of us, the attention of politics and the public has shifted towards the issue of flood protection and related policies. The most important managerial challenge in Dutch water management today is to combine the two different pillars of Dutch water management: the newly developed policies for flood alleviation and protection, and the implementation of WFD. A very obvious explanation for the Dutch hesitation in implementing the WFD may be that they simply try to protect existing economic interests, such as those of agriculture, and that they do not want to bear the full costs of ecosystem rehabilitation. At this stage of the implementation process it is impossible to indicate which factors are most important. What we can conclude though, is that the Dutch favour a pragmatic approach aimed at minimising future obligations towards Europe. This seemingly contrasts the initial ambitions in the uploading stage. In any case, despite efforts to minimise the impact of the WFD ( pragmatic implementation ) the WFD has placed issues of water pollution on the political agenda again, and, the Netherlands, just like any other European member state, has to take into account ecological issues more seriously than it used to do in the past. Therefore, the discourse of river basin management and the institutionalisation of this discourse on the European level have brought about institutional change. This change is neither paradigmatic nor revolutionary, but fits in the more evolutionary shifts towards more, integrated, ecologically inspired water management, which has been going on for a few decades now.