Governance of water resources in the phase of change: a case study of the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive in Sweden

Abstract

In this article, focusing on the ongoing implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive, we analyze some of the opportunities and challenges for a sustainable governance of water resources from an ecosystem management perspective. In the face of uncertainty and change, the ecosystem approach as a holistic and integrated management framework is increasingly recognized. The ongoing implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) could be viewed as a reorganization phase in the process of change in institutional arrangements and ecosystems. In this case study from the Northern Baltic Sea River Basin District, Sweden, we focus in particular on data and information management from a multi-level governance perspective from the local stakeholder to the River Basin level. We apply a document analysis, hydrological mapping, and GIS models to analyze some of the institutional framework created for the implementation of the WFD. The study underlines the importance of institutional arrangements that can handle variability of local situations and trade-offs between solutions and priorities on different hierarchical levels.

Fig. 1

(a) The Baltic Sea drainage area (yellow), with the five river basin districts of Sweden (green), and countries within the drainage area, where the European Union countries are typed in blue (country code ISO 3166-1). (b) The Northern Baltic Sea River Basin District with catchments entering the Baltic Sea. The catchment of Norrström, including the Lake Mälaren, is the largest catchment in the district and also where the sub-catchment of Oxunda is situated (yellow). The catchment of River Svärtaån (light red) represents one of the smaller catchments discharging directly into the Baltic Sea. (c) The Oxunda River Basin, including municipalities (dashed line), and the case study area, the northern Oxunda catchment, shaded (////). The Oxunda river mouth is in the north western part situated at the municipality border of Sigtuna and Upplands-Väsby. ArcView GIS data from Baltic Drainage Basin Project (BDBP), UNEP/GRID-Arendal 2001. Swedish Map data of lakes and catchments from SVAR, and WISS.© SMHI, © Lantmäteriet Gävle 2010. Permission I 2010/0056

Fig. 2

The northern part of the Oxunda catchment (a–b), with the results of the TWI calculations (b), with locations 1–3 highlighted. In map c–d, zooming in location 1, current land use in and TWI is shown together with property boundaries. The choice of different landowners to provide measures such as creation of new wetlands may not necessarily coincide with hydrologically suitable areas. Further, this type of measures may not be prioritized by the water organizations in a particular catchment (in this example Oxunda). © Lantmäteriet Gävle 2010. Grant I 2010/0044