Addressing Gaps in Environmental Water Policy Issues across Five Mediterranean Freshwater Protected Areas

Abstract

The increasing pressure on water resources in Europe’s broader area led member states to take measures and adopt a common legislative “umbrella” of directives to protect them. The aim of this research is to investigate practicing deficiencies, information lacks and distances from optimal status as set by the Water Framework Directive and supporting water uses. This contributes to the improvement of the efficiency and harmonization of all environmental goals especially when management of Protected Areas is addressed. Gap analysis, an approach that reveals the distance between current and desired level, was carried out, targeting five Mediterranean hydro-ecosystems, covering three major water policy pillars “Monitoring Practices”, “Management Practices” and “Water Quality and Pressures”. Data for such analyses was collected by literature research supported by a query matrix. The findings revealed a lack in compliance with the Water Framework Directive regarding the “Monitoring Practices” and several deficiencies in sites burdened by eutrophication and human pressures on “Water Quality and Pressures” field. As for “Management Practices”, extra effort should be applied in all hydro-ecosystems to reach the desirable state. We suggest that gap analysis, as a harmonization tool, can unify apparently different areas under the same goals to reveal the extra necessary “investment”.

Insights on the Water–Energy–Food Nexus

“…The Water Framework Directive (WFD) 2000/60/EC aims at protecting all water systems in the European Union's territory. Based on the WFD guidelines set regarding water systems, a study to identify environmental policy gaps in Mediterranean national parks (hydro-ecosystems) was done [7]. Using gap analysis, the results confirmed that human pressures altered national parks, and in particular, human pressures and eutrophication are the main factors.…”

“…To solve the problem of optimum allocation of water and to locate one or more new reservoirs in a river-with-reservoirs system, a MILP model is used [13]. Additionally, management measures are assessed in Mediterranean national parks showing that there are inconsistencies with the guidelines set by the WFD (such as in monitoring water systems) [7]. The causes are mainly human interventions and eutrophication causing pollution.…”

Economic Analysis under the Water Framework Directive: The State of the Art and Way forward

“…An assessment of monitoring gaps is also found in Latinopoulos et al [18]. In this paper, five case studies in the Mediterranean area are selected and a GA is performed on policy factors so as to improve monitoring, management, and networking practices.…”

“…Latinopoulos et al [18] GA of management and monitoring practices, water and quality pressures. Lehmann et al [19] GA of existing regional observation systems.…”