The Status of the European Waters in 2015: a Review

Abstract

The paper aims at presenting the recent European developments in water resources management with particular focus on the EU policies related to floods, droughts and ecosystems and their implementation. In this context, the Water Framework Directive (WFD), the Flood Directive and the Communication on Water Scarcity and Droughts are critically presented and analysed. Also, the main methodologies endorsed by the member states for the implementation of EU directives, such as the DPSIR (Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response), the risk assessment and the CEA (Cost-Effectiveness Analysis) are briefly discussed. Further, the first account of the implementation of the EU directives by the member states is presented, together with the statistics that resulted from the first River Basin Management Plans of WFD and the first results from the Flood Directive. It is concluded that despite the significant progress achieved up to now on the fulfilment of the environmental objectives, there is still a long way to go particularly for the new member states of the EU. Enhanced integration of all related policies and better coordination is still required for improving the effectiveness of the Programmes of Measures (PoMs) in the River Basin Districts of the EU territory. Finally, future amendments in European policies on water resources are discussed which will lead to revised environmental objectives for the second and third stage applications of the water directives by the EU member states.

Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources and Reservoir Management: Uncertainty and Adaptation for a Mountain Catchment in Northeast Portugal

“…This is particularly important because water is a primary resource for household, hydropower production, industry and irrigation (Falkenmark and Rockstrom 2004). Therefore, ensuring water quantity, quality and seasonality is an important concern for policy makers and stakeholders under the European agenda (Tsakiris 2015). On the other hand, water scarcity is not only dependent on meteorological drought, that is, the lack of precipitation during a certain period, but also on non-meteorological factors, such as high water demands and lack of or inadequate water related infra-structures (e.g.…”

Comparative Assessment of Various Water Quality Indices (WQIs) in Polyphytos Reservoir-Aliakmon River, Greece

“…Undoubtedly, this has a negative effect on the compatibility between the methodologies that different member States utilize as well as on the ability of comparing classification results derived for different types of aquatic systems (i.e., lakes, rivers, groundwaters, coastal areas etc.) [1,2].…”

A Hybrid Multicriteria 0/1 Programming Methodology for Prioritizing the Measures of River Basin Management Plans

“…Moreover, there are arguments which put emphasis on the bias of the cost effectiveness method towards large scale actions [9] and on the mono-disciplinary (predominately neoclassical) perspective instead of the multicriteria synthesis [10]. In addition, in cases where it is needed to evaluate multiple conflicting criteria for environmental and resource management in the decision-making process, multicriteria analysis (MCA) could provide scientifically sound solutions [11,12].…”