background
General Information on the Water Framework Directive and
Economics
The concept of environmental and resource costs plays a central role in
the economic analysis of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD).
Environmental and resource costs are an explicit feature of Article 9
of the Directive and both environmental and resource costs and benefits
play a role in the identification and definition of environmental
objectives and disproportionate costs in Article 4, and the selection
of programmes to achieve the environmental objectives in Article 11.
However, despite the centrality of environmental and resource costs and
benefits to the WFD, there are no methodological guidelines regarding
their practical assessment and inclusion within economic analyses of
the WFD. Although recent decades have witnessed an enormous expansion
of methods for assessing environmental costs and benefits, to date
little progress has been made in converting these theoretical and
methodological advancements into practical guidance readily applicable
for water policy purposes.
The EU policy context: the Common Implementation Strategy
(CIS)
In order to address the challenge of implementing the Water Framework
Directive in a cooperative and coordinated way, the Member States,
Norway and the Commission agreed on a Common Implementation Strategy
(CIS) for the Water Framework Directive. Under the CIS process, several
guidance documents were elaborated, which were later tested in
different pilot river basins. In the recent past, the CIS working group
ECO2 has looked at the issue of ERCB in greater detail , however its
approach has been primarily theoretical and conceptual in nature, and
thus it did not provide clear and understandable guidelines for
environmental and resource cost assessment. Therefore the exact role
and context specific estimation and interpretation of the estimated
environmental and resource costs and benefits in the implementation of
the WFD, and hence policy maker demand for their assessment, are still
surrounded by many uncertainties and require further clarification.
The policy context in the EU Member States
In order to support the economic analysis in the Water Framework
Directive, several EU Member States have begun to develop conceptual
approaches and test these in pilot basins. The following sites present
some general information on the WFD implementation in selected
countries, as well as specific information on the economic analysis.
Resource sites
The following sites provide information about the valuation of
environmental goods and services, in particular related to aquatic
resources
- Information on valuation of aquatic
resources by the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works
and Water
Management (in Dutch)
- Environmental
Valuation Reference Inventory (EVRI): Database presenting
empirical
studies on the economic value of environmental benefits and human
health effects from all over the world, available in French and
English, requires paid subscription (except UK and French residents)
- ValueBaseSWE:
A database presenting summary information on a range of valuation
studies from Sweden (including, but not limited to, valuation of
aquatic resources). The database itself is in English, the studies are
either English or Swedish with an English abstract.
- EnValue:
International environmental valuation database maintained by the
Government of New South Wales, Australia. Not limited to, but including
water-related studies, mostly from Australia and the US. Not updated
recently.
- Environmental Economics Report Database
at
the US Environment Protection Agency, containing 280 environmental
economic research reports, including several on water-related topics.
Research Activities
