The importance of building water resilience is becoming more and more clear to politicians and citizens as Europe is facing another summer of severe droughts leading to disruptions of water supply, damages to crop production and severe water stress in vulnerable aquatic ecosystems.
Strengthening Europe´s water resilience requires better strategies to tackle water scarcity and droughts, which are being intensified by climate change. The EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030 and the EU Climate Adaptation Strategy under the European Green Deal have set priorities to urge Member States to take action. These EU strategies ask EU Member States to strengthen the implementation of ecological flows and to improve water allocation systems.
European research delivers key insights on the design and implementation of regulations being used for water allocation and ecological flows in different countries and highlights areas where actions need to be strengthened.
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In the context of key EU policy initiatives described in the previous section, three themes of legal and
regulatory nature with high relevance to sustainable and equitable water use in Europe and in the
GOVAQUA Living Labs have been chosen for closer inspection in this report:
• The design and implementation of water allocation regimes (how to provide enough water for
users within limits of system)
• The design and implementation of eflows policies and strategies
• The regulation of water value chains.
The three selected themes are key building blocks for increasing water resilience in Europe, as they address
the integration of environmental needs into legal and policy frameworks on water use, the reconciliation of
current and potential water uses and the role of corporate behaviour for sustainable water use.
The integration of ecological flows and water allocation mechanisms in water management systems
present innovative approaches to managing water with the aim to enhance resilience. Ecological flow
(eflow) is the amount of water required for the aquatic ecosystem to continue to thrive and provide the
services we rely upon (Tharme, 2003). Water allocation mechanisms define who is allowed to access water,
how much may be taken and when, how it must be returned, and the conditions attached to the use of the
water (OECD, 2015). Ecological flows defined to sustain aquatic ecosystems provide ecological boundaries
for water allocation regimes. The water allocation process must then harmonize the requirements of water
users with these ecological limits. The integration of eflows in water allocation is therefore a crucial step for
their implementation. Managing allocations for water resources also plays a crucial role in ensuring
effective and equitable distribution of water as a common good. With the present report, GOVAQUA
contributes to research needs on the design and implementation of regulations being used for water
allocation and ecological flows in different European countries and can highlight areas where actions need
to be strengthened.
The regulation of water-intensive value chains seeks to enhance the sustainability of corporations’ water
use, thus contributing to sustainable water management practices. A corporation’s value chains consist of
the activities it undertakes to transform raw materials and components into final products, and cover both
the corporation’s own activities as well as those of its suppliers (Bair, 2008; Salminen and Rajavuori, 2019).
Value chains may be fully domestic or – more often – geographically split into the areas of many legal
jurisdictions (Pedersen et al., 2017). Through such value chains and the related trade and business
relations, a corporation may have an impact on water use in other EU member states and beyond.
Managing corporations’ water-related value chains is a crucial step in promoting sustainable water use by
corporations. Corporate water stewardship is “socially and culturally equitable, environmentally
sustainable and economically beneficial water use, achieved through a stakeholder-inclusive process that
includes both site- and catchment-based actions” (AWS, 2023). The present GOVAQUA report analyses the
legal and regulatory approach to value chain management in different European countries particularly from
the perspective of water.
A host of environmental and sectoral legislation and policies at EU and national level build the legal and
regulatory framework of these three themes linked to water use regimes. The analysis of national policies
on water allocation, eflows and water value chains focuses on the six countries of GOVAQUA Living Labs
(France, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Romania, England in UK), where innovative governance approaches for
sustainable and equitable water use are to be developed and tested.
The results of the analysis are presented in three distinct parts of the report, so that they can also be made
available as separate reports to interested audiences. Part A reviews national water allocation policies. Part
B reviews national eflows policies and strategies. Part C reviews regulations for value chains and
sustainable water footprints.
GOVAQUA Deliverable 2.1 Policy matrix 8
Although the results are presented in three distinct parts, the analysis of regulations on water allocation,
eflows and water value chains followed a similar methodology.
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