Biblioteca Digital

Public utilities, agricultural and industrial economical sectors and ecosystems depend on the water supplied by the natura environment. These water needs, the European Water Framework Directive requirements and the key surface water pollution problems identified at a River Basin scale, lead to the development of a water quality indicator system for surface waters. This is an environmental tool, which allows the assessment of the pressure-stateimpact of human activities on surface water quality. This paper presents a methodology based on the conceptual model Pressure State Response, and on an environmental description of the Portuguese Ave River Basin, based on chemical and hydro-morphological water quality elements, due to the lack of information regarding biological elements. It is shown that the most relevant questions for the implementation of an indicator system for the surface waters of this river basin are: eutrophication, contamination by bacterias, presence of organic mater, oxidation state and organic metals emission.

The Azores Water Plan (AWP) came to force in year 2003 in order to provide a coherent set of measures to protect and enhance water resources in the archipelago. The AWP was developed according to EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) and a close relationship can be found between goals on both documents. The evaluation of results associated to AWP implementation, made possible through a consultation procedure described in the present paper, provides an indirect assessment of the implementation of the WFD in an EU outermost region such as the Azores. The analysis suggests that major constrains to the full implementation of the AWP and WFD are associated with administrative arrangements, reflected in a lack of coordination, as well as adequate funding and cost recovery and strategies for public participation and information provision. Instead, water quality monitoring is already fully operational showing a strong relationship between science and water policy.

The supramolecular salt [H2pip]3[GeACHTUNGTRENUNG(hedp)2]·14H2O (1) [H2pip2+ =piperazine cation C4H12N2 2+; hedp5 =deprotonated form of etidronic acid, C2H3P2O7 5 ) is reported. This consists of an organic–inorganic hybrid hydrogen-bonded nanoporous framework, the internal surface of which acts as a template for the three-dimensional (3D) clustering of water molecules. The structure and molecular dynamics of this material are characterised by single-crystal X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis, Raman (H/D isotopic substitution) spectroscopy, and 2H solid-state (wide-line and MAS) NMR spectroscopy. Material 1 is shown to be unusual because 1) few nanoporous materials exhibit a well-organised 3D framework of water molecules, 2) it provides a unique opportunity to follow experimentally and to rationalise the deconstruction of a 3D water framework and 3) despite the fact that the hybrid framework is a supramolecular salt, the structure does not collapse after dehydrati

The major implications that the European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive (WFD) may have in irrigated agriculture were analysed using alternative water policy measures. The consequences of policy change were evaluated in a case study (Baixo Alentejo, Portugal), using a Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) model that simulates farmers’ preferred behaviour. The study compares the effects of water pricing (volumetric and flat tariffs) and consumption quotas, in farmer’s income, water agency revenues, agricultural employment and water demand for irrigation. Model results indicate that the adjustments in farmer’s responses are dependent on the policy strategy enforced and on the policy level.

The objective of the WADI project is to analyse the sustainability of irrigated agriculture in Europe in the context of post Agenda 2000 agricultural policies and in the context of the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive. The approach followed to evaluate the sustainability of irrigation integrates the concepts of environmental sustainability and economic and social sustainability. This work analyses the implications that the Water Framework Directive (WFD) may have on three major irrigation regions of Portugal – Baixo Alentejo, Lezíria do Tejo and Baixo Mondego– when a volumetric tariff is applied to irrigation water under different policy scenarios. The first sections provide a general description of the main features of agriculture and irrigated agriculture in Portugal; describes the selected study regions and characterizes some typologies within these regions; and explains the methodology used in this study. Later on the impacts of policy change, particularly concerning prospective future scenarios and the impact caused by WFD implementation via a volumetric tariff, are presented at a regionally aggregated level.

It is clear that the successful management of water resources must take into account the influence of policies affecting the irrigated agriculture sector. Among these, the importance of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) is well recognised. In Portugal, more than 606,000 hectares (INE 2001b) are allocated to irrigated agriculture, which accounts for 74.8% of all water uses (INAG 2002). To study the combined effect of these policies, two irrigated regions of Portugal, Baixo Alentejo and Lezíria do Tejo, were analysed in case studies. Multi-Criteria Decision Making models (MCDM) were applied to characterise farmers’ decision-making attitudes of the main irrigated agriculture systems of these regions. The implications of environmental (WFD) and agricultural (CAP) policy change are assessed by reproducing farmers’ decision-making behaviour. Simulation results indicate that changes in these policies are conducive to substantial adjustments within the irrigated agriculture sector. This study demonstrates that the consequences of implementing the WFD are dependent both on the water price level set by the WFD and on the agricultural policy strategy in place.

In the fifty years since the foundation of the European Community, Europe has evolved in many fields. From being exclusively concerned with economic integration – reflected by policies to increase agricultural productivity and improvement of intra-communitarian trade –, nowadays, the European Union is gradually advancing towards a political integration, in the direction of common environmental values and towards the sustainability of natural resources. While in the Treaties of the European Community of Steel and Coal (1952) and Rome (1957) there is no direct reference to environmental issues, since the Treaty of Amsterdam this problematic issue has been a central theme of EU development, being clearly defined as one community objective to be reached. Frequently, in sustainability concepts only the degradation and misuse of natural resources are taken in account. This paper follows a different concept, where the discussion of sustainability is transferred to and placed in the context of a wider notion, integrating the political, social and economic dimensions of agricultural sustainability. Having this framework in mind, this paper analyses the major implications that an environmental policy, such as the EU Water Framework Directive...

Doutoramento em Economia; This work is a contribution to the study of how the Portuguese water industry can meet the goals of cost recovery and water use efficiency set out by the Water Framework Directive. We describe the Portuguese water and wastewater tariffs implemented from 1998 to 2005 and the cost recovery levels for that period. The tariff revenues collected by the water utilities are insufficient to meet the financial costs of their activities, especially regarding wastewater, and the situation has worsened in recent years. We review the existing water pricing models, highlighting some important results like the fact that efficiency requires marginal cost pricing, which may not be feasible while respecting a revenue requirement. It is not evident whether the best scheme is a two-part tariff or some other pricing mechanism like increasing block tariffs (IBT), which are abundantly used in Portugal. We incorporate the scarcity cost associated with insufficient water availability into the optimal tariff design. We show that when both demand and costs respond to climate factors, increasing marginal prices may come about as a combined result of scarcity and customer heterogeneity when the fixed charge is only allowed to cover fixed costs and the utility is required to maintain a balanced budget. Ultimately...

The document is structured in three parts covering the key thematic areas of water supply service delivery, sanitation service delivery, and overall policy. Each part describes a series of different actions that can be taken to improve service delivery to low-income communities, outlines key lessons and challenges and identifies the principles of good practice. This project is aimed at developing a better understanding of the conditions necessary for water and sanitation services to reach low-income communities. It sought to build on the knowledge and experience of the various actors currently involved in delivering or supporting these services. One of the main observations of the authors is that there is never just one solution to any particular problem. Within each country context, the key to a successful strategy lies in the capacity of practitioners working in the water and sanitation sector to innovate and to adapt solutions to address local constraints and opportunities. This document aims to: (i) describe the challenges facing service delivery to low-income urban communities; (ii) outline key principles that guide water and sanitation sector practitioners in the delivery of services to the urban poor; and (iii) provide tangible examples from a range of sub-saharan African countries to illustrate these principles and challenges.

RESUMEN. Puertos del Estado, tras la aprobación de la Directiva Marco del Agua (DMA), consideró esencial el proporcionar herramientas científica y técnicamente sólidas que pudieran contribuir a la gestión de las aguas portuarias. Fruto de esta inquietud, se desarrolló la ROM 5.1 “Calidad de aguas litorales en áreas portuarias”, procedimiento fácil de implementar dentro de los esquemas de gestión portuaria, y económicamente viable. La aplicación de la ROM 5.1 al Puerto de Tarragona ha permitido confirmar que dicha recomendación permite llevar a cabo una gestión integral de los sistemas acuáticos portuarios coherente con los principios establecidos por la Directiva Marco del Agua.; ABSTRACT. On the passing of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), Puertos del Estado, Spain’s national port agency, considered it essential to provide scientific and technically proven tools to contribute to the management of seaport waters. This led to the development of the ROM 5.1 (Recommendations for Maritime Works) “Quality of coastal waters in seaport areas”, an economically viable procedure that may be readily implemented within port management schemes. The application of the ROM 5.1 to the Port of Tarragona has confirmed the validity of these recommendations to ensure the integral management of port water bodies in accordance with the guidelines established by the Water Framework Directive.

RESUMEN. Existe una creciente necesidad de entender mejor la naturaleza de las relaciones entre los atributos ambientales y las comunidades/especies de agua dulce para poder desarrollar acciones apropiadas que minimicen el impacto del cambio ambiental en los ecosistemas fluviales. Tal entendimiento necesitaría estar basado en investigaciones de relaciones causales más que en estudios de correlaciones estadísticas, como se acostumbra. Otro aspecto es la identificación de la escala a la cual los procesos y las características deben ser medidas para permitir un diseño de programas de monitoreo relevante. En este artículo se presenta una breve revisión de los conocimientos existentes sobre las relaciones especies/hábitat y se discuten los marcos teóricos existentes para la identificación de las características ambientales de importancia para la fauna y la determinación de la escala/s a la que deben evaluarse. Asimismo, proponemos un método para utilizar esas relaciones en el contexto de la supervisión y las prácticas de gestión en las organizaciones de conservación. Mostramos como modelos conceptuales de relaciones entre hábitats y especies pueden ser construidos usando el conocimiento existente y la opinión de expertos y como pueden ser testados utilizando datos recogidos como parte de los programas de monitoreo en las instituciones encargadas de la conservación. Sugerimos que tal marco...

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) was implemented rather late in Italy. The actual implementation took place in 2006 with decree 152/2006 but the Directive was not completely effective until the beginning of 2009, when law 13/2009 provided for the implementation of river basin plans by basin authorities. The objective of this paper is to describe the implementation of the WFD in Italy and to discuss selected policy and research issues. The paper begins with an introduction highlighting the specificities of Italy in terms of water management. With regard to implementation, the general administrative setting, as well as the interpretation of WFD categories related to economic evaluations will be illustrated. Two major issues of particularly high relevance in the present debate are then discussed: a) the evaluation of environmental and resource costs; and b) water regulation in agriculture.

This paper deals primarily with the assessment of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) implementation in the Iberian basins. This assessment has been carried out in an innovative way by the Observatory of the Water Framework Directive known with the acronym ODMA after its Spanish name. The Observatory is a project of the Water Foundation for a New Water Culture (FNCA) leaded by researchers of different scientific disciplines related to water, with the involvement of non academic actors, like, for instance, practitioners of the water sector and environmental activists. The paper first describes the organisation and scope of the Observatory in the context of a post-normal science approach. In a second part the methodological outline of the assessment is briefly described. Thereafter, the main evaluation results of the WFD implementation process are summarised. The main findings are grouped following a thematic classification: institutional setting, public participation, ecological and economic aspects and exemptions. An epigraph with conclusions closes the article.; El art??culo se centra principalmente en la evaluaci??n de la implementaci??n de la Directiva Marco del Agua (DMA) en las cuencas ib??ricas. Esta evaluaci??n se ha realizado de una manera innovadora por el Observatorio de la Directiva Marco del Agua (ODMA). Dicho Observatorio es un proyecto de la Fundaci??n Nueva Cultura del Agua (FNCA) liderado por investigadores de diferentes disciplinas cient??ficas relacionadas con el agua y con la participaci??n de actores no acad??micos como...

This paper discusses how water managers and spatial planners could co-operate on local level in combination with the implementation of the Water Framework Directive and the Birds and Habitats Directives in the Netherlands. Recent evaluations of the European Commission show that implementation of environmental directives prove to be a challenging task for the responsible authorities. Studies show that legal and procedural aspects of planning and decision making gain the most attention at the EU level, the formal side, while environmental goals are fading into the background, especially on the EU level. The difficulties that arise in the implementation process on a local and regional level are discussed combined with the integration of both directives from policy and practice. The local co-operation between water managers and spatial planners depends heavily on its basic element: competing interests. Aspects that shape this cooperation and define its effectiveness are: language (discipline related jargon), contracts, trust, personal competence, policy tuning & policy instruments, institutional innovations, instrumental innovations and mental innovations. These aspects will be discussed based on two case studies with water management and spatial planning aspects. This local co-operation is mainly informal of character.

In many European Union (EU) countries consultancy companies have taken a leading role in developing the framework and institutions needed for implementing the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and related legislation through ???Technical Assistance??? Projects. The focus of this paper is an ex-post evaluation of the public participation activities in three such technical assistance projects all located within the Black Sea Basin. Two projects focused on the implementation of the WFD in an EU pre-accession country, namely Romania. The other project was located in non-EU accession countries of the former Soviet Union where the approximation of EU directives or the drafting of new water laws along WFD principles was used as an instrument to help protect the Black Sea from pollution. The paper concludes that from project experience the use of local level pilot projects is very valuable at engaging stakeholders and that the use of highly prescribed public consultation schemes were not practical in the Black Sea basin but more flexible and ad hoc approaches had a very positive effect on the social learning process.

This paper describes the current state of implementation of the economic analysis prescribed by the Water Framework Directive (WFD) in Spain. It also outlines what should be the policy and research priorities for economic analysis in the coming years. The economic characterization of water services, and the theoretical and practical debate about the cost recovery principle and the role of water pricing as an efficient instrument for water demand management constitute significant progress. However, challenges do remain regarding the calculations for cost recovery and water pricing, such as the inclusion of environmental and resource costs. Other elements of the economic analysis also require further improvement. Cost-effectiveness analysis needs to be more fully applied to the Programs of Measures, and cost-benefit analysis will have to play a key role in the assessment about derogations from the required environmental objectives for certain water bodies. Two further remaining challenges are the incorporation of uncertainty in for instance cost calculations and the modeling of future water supply and demand, and the estimation of the cost of adaptation to climate change.

The Water Framework Directive establishes a common framework for EU water policy. One of its guiding principles is the promotion of public participation in water planning and management. In response to this requirement, River Basin Authorities are undertaking public participation and consultation processes as part of the elaboration of the Draft Basin Management Plans. This article describes and analyzes these processes, placing them in the context of wider public discussions and debates over water policy that have taken place in Spain over the past two decades. The paper argues that some of the strengths of Spanish WFD-related public participation processes derive from the significant improvement in the amount of information made available to the public, and from the relationships that are established between different stakeholder groups and between these and the water administration. On the other hand, the lack of credibility and legitimacy of some processes is related to the lack of political leadership and commitment to public participation, to insufficient inter-administrative cooperation, and to the persistence of parallel channels of communication between traditional water users and water managers. The paper also points to some potential areas of improvement such as the methodological design of public participation processes...

Bas??ndose en que los procesos de biomonitorizaci??n aportan informaci??n muy valiosa sobre los impactos en organismos y consecuentemente en el estado ecol??gico de los ecosistemas, la Directiva Marco del Agua (WFD; Uni??n Europea, 2000) incorpora el uso de indicadores biol??gicos y m??tricos para la evaluaci??n del estado ecol??gico de las masas de agua. Uno de los elementos biol??gicos definidos en la Directiva es ???Otra flora acu??tica??? incluyendo macr??fitos y fitobentos; la composici??n y abundancia de macr??fitos debe ser estimada y evaluada en los lagos definidos como masas de agua dentro de la WFD. Los macr??fitos tienen muchas de las caracter??sticas destacadas para ser un buen bioindicador; responden a fluctuaciones naturales de los reg??menes hidrol??gicos, situaci??n muy habitual en pa??ses mediterr??neos, y adem??s, podr??an detectar cambios atribuibles a presiones e impactos antropog??nicos. Existen dos tipos principales de evaluaci??n basados en el uso de las comunidades de macr??fitos; ??ndices de diversidad (englobando diferentes variables) e ??ndices basados en el estado tr??fico de las aguas. En la pr??ctica, ambos sistemas convergen para la evaluaci??n de estado ecol??gico en el sistema; sin embargo los ??ndices tr??ficos no son capaces de desvelar suficiente informaci??n sobre otro tipo de perturbaciones...

Soil degradation has both indirect and direct effects on the quality of surface and ground waters. In this sense, agriculture is one of the key activities causing water quality degradation in many parts of Mediterranean systems. In the European Union, the purpose of the Water Framework Directive (European Commission, 2000) is to establish a framework for the protection of inland surface, transitional, coastal and ground waters too. A major source of surface and ground water pollution is the diffuse contamination caused by nitrates in agricultural lands. This specific water protection was regulated by the Nitrates Directive (ND, 1991/676/EC), which in Spain was developed by a Royal Decree (261/1996/BOE), and in Andalusia region by a Decree (36/2008/BOJA) for the designation of water quality vulnerability zones (22 zones) and an Order of the Regional Government of Andalusia (18.11.2008/BOJA) to establish the action programs (1 unique program) to be implemented by farmers. However, the Nitrates Directive considers that different action programs may be established for different vulnerable zones or parts of those areas. Also, these action programs must take into account scientific and technical information that are available on each particular soil and climatic conditions...

DINÂMIA, Outubro de 2008.; This paper assesses the situation in Portugal in 2005 regarding cost recovery in the water supply (WS) and wastewaterdrainage and treatment (WWDT) industry by type of system (bulk and retail water and wastewater), by type of utility and by NUTS III, halfway between the publication of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the meeting of the 2010 deadline. For that purpose, we build on the previous contribution by Monteiro (2007), which reported the situation in 2002, by updating the indicators to 2005 and assessing the evolution since 1998. We also present a brief historical overview of the presence of the cost recovery principle in Portuguese law regarding the industry. The main conclusions that stand out are: the introduction of the cost recovery principle is prior to the WFD and the more recent Water Law, although it lacked practical implementation; the level of revenues collected by the WS and WWDT utilities is insufficient to meet the financial costs of their activities; the situation is worse for wastewater than for WS systems, revealing evidence of cross-subsidization within the utilities which manage both systems; the situation has worsened in recent years; cost recovery levels are lower in the less densely populated and poorer inland regions; finally...