Abstract
Claims for a global agenda addressing the need to protect environmental flows are increasing. In the context of frequent conflicts related to unsustainable exploitation of rivers, instream flow policies may result in very different outcomes and involve different beneficiaries. We propose and test an innovative local knowledge-based methodology that uses the ecosystem services approach to disentangle the links within the river-society system. In particular, network analysis is employed to identify potential tradeoffs caused by the river flow management. Our empirical evidence relies on a thorough scrutiny of key stakeholders’ positions in the Ter River basin (Catalonia, Spain). As in other Northern Mediterranean contexts, multiple weirs interrupt the water flow in the upper course, diverting water for hydropower. Meanwhile, in the middle course, the bulk of water flow is transferred to the metropolitan Barcelona contributing to water scarcity in the Lower Ter, where farmers and other users claim against imposed restrictions on access to water flows. Our results point out that (1) in contexts such as the analyzed one, the ‘ecosystem services’ (ES) notion enhances communication among stakeholders; (2) ground-up exercises are essential for identifying river benefits at local scale and characterizing the related ES; and (3) network analysis helps to make explicit tradeoffs between river uses, in which recognition is crucial to understand how conflicts on river flows emerge and how can be managed, (4) management of instream flows should be informed by the complex interaction, herein outlined, between hydrological alterations, components of river ecosystems and the benefits they provide.
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Notes
Instream flows are those river flows that naturally circulate within river channels. There may also be diverted flows to feed out-of-stream uses. Poff et al. (1997) define ‘environmental flow regime’ as the minimum requirement of water instream flows, seasonally variable, to preserve river ecosystems.
Range of percentages corresponding to the difference between annual water inflow and outflow, in relation to the total inflow to the reservoirs for 2003–2010. The 39 % is on 2010 and the 81 % in 2009. Source: ACA website (www.gencat.cat/aca/).
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Acknowledgments
This work has been funded by the project CSO2010-21979 from the Spanish National Program for Basic Research. B. Rodriguez-Labajos also acknowledges funding from the FP7 EU project EJOLT (G.A. 266642). Our gratitude to Carla Romeu-Dalmau and Joan Martinez-Alier for useful comments.
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Handled by Osamu Saito, UNU-Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (IAS), Japan.
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Jorda-Capdevila, D., Rodríguez-Labajos, B. An ecosystem service approach to understand conflicts on river flows: local views on the Ter River (Catalonia). Sustain Sci 10, 463–477 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-014-0286-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-014-0286-0