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Water Governance in Europe
Faulty political, administrative, economic and social systems have been considered obstacles for ensuring the delivery of water services in different parts of the world. The absence of good governance mechanisms has been understood to cause difficulties for the design and implementation of effective water policies. In order to analyse the national regulatory measures that ensure water governance across, 14 criteria covering access to information, public participation and access to justice were compared for six European countries.
Results of the research, led by Dr Monica Garcia Quesada, show that the countries display important cross-national differences in water services governance. The existing national regulatory frameworks provide for very different mechanisms to increase transparency, direct participation for consumers and access to justice. Within these differences, some likeness can be found among countries that employ similar approaches to set their water price and their service quality standards.
According to the report, water services and price setting is controlled by either a regulatory agency approach, a contract approach or an internal approach. In the former case, e.g. England and Scotland, independent economic agencies are responsible for setting a price cap on the maximum bill increases allowed to water providers and environmental and public health agencies are in charge of establishing customer standards that they need to comply with. Such an approach favour access to information and provide opportunities for public participation. Consumers have benefited from a set of uniform national rules defining their rights to information and the instances and scope for participation.
In the case of a contract approach, common in Spain, France and Italy, a delegator (in most cases, the local authority) signs an agreement with a water operator (either public or privately owned) stipulating the conditions for the provision of the service, the charges imposed to consumers and the characteristics of the service that consumers receive. The delegator has to ensure that the water operator complies with all minimum service standards and with environmental and public health requirements. However, concerns have been raised regarding the degree of control that the local authorities exert over the water operators. Legislative provisions to facilitate information transparency, public participation and access to justice vary significantly.
A self-regulatory approach is one in which responsible bodies supply drinking waterand sewerage services directly. In this case, information given to consumers, opportunities to participate in the decision-making process and mechanisms to access to justice are more limited. French and Spanish local authorities have a democratic mandate to provide local services, which has given them the legitimacy to operate as responsible bodies for water provision. In the Netherlands, local and regional governments along with water boards manage directly the provision of water services, and establish the conditions and standards of their activities.
The report has found that the French national regulatory system has introduced stricter standards for information transparency, public participation and access to justice than Spain, where these measures have been more contingent on local authorities’ decisions. The Netherlands, however, has ensured a higher degree of access to information and of justice, whereas it has developed only limited opportunities for consumers to participate directly in decision making processes to set water prices and standards of service.
In this context, the comparison shows that although ownership and delegation of water services provision are important factors in shaping the features of national water services governance, they do not determine the legal provisions which a country develops to allow consumers to access to information, to participate in decision-making processes and to access to justice at the national level. The authors conclude that a more nuanced analysis is required in order to understand governance in water services provision.
For more information, visit
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/water/projects/watersanitationservicesineurope/#d.en.40683which provides access to both the full report and the executive summary.
| Contact information | n/a |
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| News type | Inbrief |
| File link |
http://http://www.waterlink-international.com/news/id1920-Water_Governance_in_Europe.html |
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| Source of information | Water Link International |
| Keyword(s) | water supply, water treatment, water storage, water distribution, Governance, European Union, Water governance, water policy, water resource development and management outlines |
| Subject(s) | CHARACTERISTICAL PARAMETERS OF WATERS AND SLUDGES , DRINKING WATER , DRINKING WATER AND SANITATION : COMMON PROCESSES OF PURIFICATION AND TREATMENT , HEALTH - HYGIENE - PATHOGENIC MICROORGANISM , INFORMATION - COMPUTER SCIENCES , METHTODOLOGY - STATISTICS - DECISION AID , POLICY-WATER POLICY AND WATER MANAGEMENT , RISKS AND CLIMATOLOGY |
| Geographical coverage | Europe |
| News date | 08/06/2011 |
| Working language(s) | ENGLISH |
