EU WATER POLICY: RESEARCH DEVELOPMENTS AND NEW MANAGEMENT TOOLS

At the end of 2000, the European Commission published its Water Framework Directive (WFD) in the Official Journal of the European Communities (2000/60/EC). This new legislation provides for achieving the sustainable management of water resources through its 26 articles that focus primarily on the improvement and protection of the quality of European water resources. The WFD adopts an integrated approach, based upon general principles deriving mainly from four disciplinary approaches, Geography; Ecology; Economics and Sociology. The new challenges posed to the people responsible for the management of water resources across the European Union include the "marrying" of existing national policies with the stipulations of the WFD. Research can support this transition by identifying compatibility and conflicts between legislative instruments, and by encouraging trans-national cooperative relationships. A relevant role of research is also foreseen in providing criteria and tools for conflict resolution by representing the goals of sustainable management in an objective and transparent way. The elaboration required for making planning decisions are increasing in number and complexity, requiring tools that help to organise and communicate the data that should be used to describe the decision context in terms of sustainability, in a holistic way by including environmental, economic and social information. These problems are being addressed by the MULINO Project, a 3-year research program aiming at producing a Decision Support System that will assist water managers in responding to the evolution of policies and management methodologies. The development of the system, which will be prepared in a software format, is being steered by a group of people from European water authorities. This steering committee is contributing to the policy analysis component of the research and to the software design which aims to be applicable in five different national contexts. This paper addresses the challenges and innovations that have been encountered in the second phase of research in which the first prototype of the software has been developed to operate in specific decision situations in each of MULINO's six case studies.Sustainable water management, EU policy, DSS tool, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Interdisciplinary assessment of sea-level rise and climate change impacts on the lower Nile delta, Egypt

Copyright © 2015 Elsevier. NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Science of the Total Environment. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Science of the Total Environment Vol. 503-504 (2015), DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2014.06.111CLImate-induced changes on WAter and SECurity (CLIWASEC) was a cluster of three complementary EC-FP7 projects assessing climate-change impacts throughout the Mediterranean on: hydrological cycles (CLIMB - CLimate-Induced changes on the hydrology of Mediterranean Basins); water security (WASSERMed - Water Availability and Security in Southern EuRope and the Mediterranean) and human security connected with possible hydro-climatic conflicts (CLICO - CLImate change hydro-COnflicts and human security). The Nile delta case study was common between the projects. CLIWASEC created an integrated forum for modelling and monitoring to understand potential impacts across sectors. This paper summarises key results from an integrated assessment of potential challenges to water-related security issues, focusing on expected sea-level rise impacts by the middle of the century. We use this common focus to illustrate the added value of project clustering. CLIWASEC pursued multidisciplinary research by adopting a single research objective: sea-level rise related water security threats, resulting in a more holistic view of problems and potential solutions. In fragmenting research, policy-makers can fail to understand how multiple issues can materialize from one driver. By combining efforts, an integrated assessment of water security threats in the lower Nile is formulated, offering policy-makers a clearer picture of inter-related issues to society and environment. The main issues identified by each project (land subsidence, saline intrusion - CLIMB; water supply overexploitation, land loss - WASSERMed; employment and housing security - CLICO), are in fact related. Water overexploitation is exacerbating land subsidence and saline intrusion, impacting on employment and placing additional pressure on remaining agricultural land and the underdeveloped housing market. All these have wider implications for regional development. This richer understanding could be critical in making better policy decisions when attempting to mitigate climate and social change impacts. The CLIWASEC clustering offers an encouraging path for the new European Commission Horizon 2020 programme to follow.European Commission Seventh Framework Program CLICOEuropean Commission Seventh Framework Program CLIMBEuropean Commission Seventh Framework Program WASSERMe

Changement climatique et impacts sur l’eau

National audienceAu-delà des incertitudes sur les causes, le réchauffement climatique est une certitude. L'élévation de la température moyenne des océans ne laisse aucune ambiguïté sur l'ampleur des modifications à attendre sur le cycle hydrologique. Toutefois , les résultats du couplage des modèles climatiques et hydrologiques sont incertains. Alors, à quelle ampleur de modifications nos sociétés doivent-elles se préparer? Pourquoi établit-on un lien entre changement climatique, eau et sécurité? Le présent article souhaite, après une description des certitudes et des incertitudes sur le changement climatique observé et projeté, notamment par les travaux du GIEC, se focaliser sur l'impact du changement climatique sur le cycle de l'eau et les zones les plus vulnérables pour les sociétés humaines

What could change drought governance in Europe?: A comparison of two case studies in France and the UK

This chapter proposes an analysis of the water and drought governance contexts in case studies of two countries of North West Europe (NWE) that have been jointly impacted during the past severe droughts, France and the United Kingdom (UK) with respectively two case studies: the Vilaine catchment in French Brittany, and the Somerset Levels and Moors in south west UK. It presents a comparative analysis of the outputs of the implementation of the Governance Assessment Tool developed by H. Bressers et al. with the Contextual Interaction Theory, the theory at the origins of the GAT. After a brief description of the two case studies, the chapter describes the methodology used to study drought governance, both the GAT as refined in the European DROP‐project for drought‐governance analysis and the Contextual Interaction Theory. It also presents the main results and discussion. The chapter further presents general conclusions for drought‐governance resilience in NWE

Water management facing drought governance: are the territories prepared to water scarcity?.

International audienc

Etude intégrée dynamique du phosphore dans le système bassin versant-lagune de Thau (mer Méditerranée, Hérault)

ORLEANS-BU Sciences (452342104) / SudocSudocFranceF

Les différentes formes de déplacement du vignoble : des leviers pour adapter la viticulture au changement climatique ?

Cet article explore différentes formes de déplacements et de réorganisations provoquées par le changement climatique sur les vignobles français en AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée) : évolution de l’encépagement au sein de l’AOC, relocalisation dans le périmètre de l’AOC, évolution du périmètre de l’AOC, délocalisation à l’extérieur de l’aire de l’AOC, déqualification de parcelles… En s’appuyant sur l’étude de l’AOC Ventoux et de plusieurs AOC du Centre-Val de Loire, l’article analyse comment ces options peuvent nourrir des stratégies d’adaptation au changement climatique.This article explores different forms of movement induced by climate change on AOC vineyards (Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée): selection of grape varieties, relocation of vines within the same AOC area, modification of the AOC perimeter, relocation outside the AOC area, de-qualification of parcels… Based on the study of AOC vineyards in Ventoux (Provence) and Val de Loire, the article analyses how these options can contribute to climate change adaptation strategies

EU WATER POLICY: RESEARCH DEVELOPMENTS AND NEW MANAGEMENT TOOLS

At the end of 2000, the European Commission published its Water Framework Directive (WFD) in the Official Journal of the European Communities (2000/60/EC). This new legislation provides for achieving the sustainable management of water resources through its 26 articles that focus primarily on the improvement and protection of the quality of European water resources. The WFD adopts an integrated approach, based upon general principles deriving mainly from four disciplinary approaches, Geography; Ecology; Economics and Sociology. The new challenges posed to the people responsible for the management of water resources across the European Union include the "marrying" of existing national policies with the stipulations of the WFD. Research can support this transition by identifying compatibility and conflicts between legislative instruments, and by encouraging trans-national cooperative relationships. A relevant role of research is also foreseen in providing criteria and tools for conflict resolution by representing the goals of sustainable management in an objective and transparent way. The elaboration required for making planning decisions are increasing in number and complexity, requiring tools that help to organise and communicate the data that should be used to describe the decision context in terms of sustainability, in a holistic way by including environmental, economic and social information. These problems are being addressed by the MULINO Project, a 3-year research program aiming at producing a Decision Support System that will assist water managers in responding to the evolution of policies and management methodologies. The development of the system, which will be prepared in a software format, is being steered by a group of people from European water authorities. This steering committee is contributing to the policy analysis component of the research and to the software design which aims to be applicable in five different national contexts. This paper addresses the challenges and innovations that have been encountered in the second phase of research in which the first prototype of the software has been developed to operate in specific decision situations in each of MULINO's six case studies

Changement climatique en Méditerranée

National audienc