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Empirical Analysis I: On Cooperation

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Micro-Pollutant Regulation in the River Rhine

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Abstract

The chapter analyzes the constituting elements of cooperation in each case study and relates them to each other to understand their interplay and the cooperation’s complexity. The chapter further assesses the case studies’ collaboration networks more thoroughly, analyzing their cohesion, their degree of fragmentation, their components and factions, and their core and peripheral actors. This descriptive SNA of specific features of the actor collaboration networks in the context of water quality management shows how collaboration—as a proxy for cooperation—can be conceptualized and understood in network terms. I complete the analysis of cooperation by focusing on the case study actors’ viewpoints of cooperation in the three case study regions in the Rhine catchment area.

The chapter closes with a case comparison: I compare the insights of the analyses—that is, the constituting elements of cooperation and the collaboration networks’ specific features—across the case studies to draw conclusions about the nature of cooperation in each case study.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Collaboration serves as a proxy for cooperation because since it is conceptually close to cooperation and I consider it to lie at the very heart of cooperation.

  2. 2.

    Interviews N° 5, 7, and 9.

  3. 3.

    Interview N° 10 and ROCHE (comment in the questionnaire).

  4. 4.

    Interview N° 13. When researcher detected high concentrations of PFOS in the Rhine and the Ruhr in 2006, pressure on waterworks to clean the water increased immediately. Waterworks in the Ruhr region in turn raised awareness for the issue at the political level; see AWWR and Ruhrverband (2016, p. 109ff).

  5. 5.

    Interview N° 15.

  6. 6.

    Interview N° 9.

  7. 7.

    Interview N° 13.

  8. 8.

    Telephone call N° 2.

  9. 9.

    Interview N° 13.

  10. 10.

    Interview N° 9.

  11. 11.

    Interview N° 13.

  12. 12.

    Network statistics were calculated in UCINET.

  13. 13.

    With the exception of the Moselle case’s political information exchange networks, where the given political information exchange network has one more tie than the received political information exchange network.

  14. 14.

    People have a better overview on whom they pass information to than on the multitude of sources they receive information from.

  15. 15.

    Interview N° 7.

  16. 16.

    IAWR and AWBR being umbrella organizations of the waterworks in the entire Rhine basin and in the region of Lake Constance.

  17. 17.

    The Ruhrverband is an association of mainly wastewater treatment plant operators and other water service providers in the Ruhr region.

  18. 18.

    ARW being the association of drinking water providers along the Rhine between Mannheim and the German-Dutch border; AWWR being the association of drinking water providers in the Ruhr basin.

  19. 19.

    Syndicat des eaux du barrage d’Esch-sur-Sûre, meaning in English Union of the Waters of the Esch-sur-Sûre Dam.

  20. 20.

    For the entire statistic, see Table 13, Annex X.

  21. 21.

    Political and technical information exchange networks are undirected, i.e., they have been symmetrized.

  22. 22.

    The network statistics were calculated with UCINET. For the entire lists of the network statistics; see Tables 13–21, Annex X. The number of mutual ties was calculated in R.

  23. 23.

    For the component analysis’ statistics, see Table 17, Annex X.

  24. 24.

    For the Ruhr case study’s weak component analysis statistics, see Table 18, Annex X.

  25. 25.

    For the calculation of the component ratios, see Fig. 3, Annex X.

  26. 26.

    The analysis was conducted using the factor analytic program of UCINET.

  27. 27.

    I tested six times for each case whether actors would be assigned to the same factions. All actors were always assigned to the same faction, cf. Borgatti et al. (2013, p. 192).

  28. 28.

    I ran algorithms on two, three, and four faction partitions for each network and compared the results’ final proportion correctness. In a second step, I ran the algorithms on the same number of partitions for each network another five times to assure actors were always placed in the same faction. This was not the case, for instance, when splitting the Basel case study’s collaboration network into three factions. I further qualitatively compared actors’ constellation within the factions. If a further added faction did not reveal a group of newly combined actors but rather split an already existing faction into two smaller factions with increasing low densities, I decided on the former number of factions.

  29. 29.

    For an overview of the cases’ factions, see Tables 19, 20 and 21, Annex X.

  30. 30.

    Interview N° 3.

  31. 31.

    A third regional state actor needs to be mentioned: the State Office for Nature, the Environment and Consumer Protection NRW (LANUV.NRW). The LANUV.NRW takes regular measurements of the water bodies in NRW, examines the samples, and produces maps and reports of the water bodies’ conditions (Interview N° 12). As this actor did not answer all of the questionnaire’s questions, it could not be included in the analysis.

  32. 32.

    Interviews N° 9 and 12.

  33. 33.

    The strong correlation between the actors’ collaboration and reputation networks further supports the decision of having tested for actors’ reputation in the ERGM via a binary variable and not via the actors’ reputation matrix. The reputation matrix would not have given a valid explanation for the existence of a tie in the actors’ collaboration network since it is too similar to the collaboration matrix.

  34. 34.

    In the Basel case, 30% of the actors are 11.1 actors; in the Ruhr case, 30% correspond to 7.8 actors; and in the Moselle case, 30% amount to 9.3 actors.

  35. 35.

    In the Basel case, 15% of the actors amount to 5.5 actors; in the Ruhr case, 15% equals 3.9 actors; and in the Moselle case, 15% correspond to 4.65 actors.

  36. 36.

    English translation: “Regarding the implementation, the FOEN is a very important actor. We confer how to do it. Any problem we have in the implementation process, we discuss with the FOEN; revisions, but also petitions. We actively approach the FOEN, telling them ‘We’ve got a problem at Basel that actually needs to be solved at the national level’. By this, we participate in the legislation process.” The Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) provides so-called Wegleitungen guidelines for the implementation of measures. The FOEN also sends the announcements (Vernehmlassungen) that the Cantonal state actors can comment on (Interview N° 3).

  37. 37.

    Interview N° 4.

  38. 38.

    English translation: “In March, there was a meeting regarding micro-pollutants, only between the FOEN and the AUE(BS). They didn’t want to have ProRheno there. And then they had a lot of questions which AUE couldn’t answer. And so they came to us. If we all had been sitting at the table… but that’s how they want it.”

  39. 39.

    The FOEN collaborates with the two cantonal laboratories of Basel City and Basel Country (LABBL & LABBS), which are run by the cantons but coded as scientific actors.

  40. 40.

    Interview N° 3.

  41. 41.

    The graph was visualized with NetDraw in UCINET.

  42. 42.

    Interview N° 2.

  43. 43.

    Interviews N° 3, 5, and 8. The German name is “Vertrauenskreis.”

  44. 44.

    See Table 4.11, Sect. 4.2.2, and Table 19, Annex X.

  45. 45.

    Interviews N° 3 and 5.

  46. 46.

    English translation: “We treat all [industrial discharger, big and small] alike. I like working with the chemical industry. They are not ‘the enemy’, not at all. They do much more positive than negative things. (…) if they are caught [polluting], they are very cooperative. They also do much more than they have to. It’s actually a good cooperation.” An example of an additional, positive action is the voluntary remediation of old landfills by the company Novartis, which costs 200 million Swiss francs (Interview N° 3).

  47. 47.

    Interviews N° 3 and 5.

  48. 48.

    The six actors are a French NGO, one German state actor and one German service provider, and a polluter, a service provider, and a regional state actor from Switzerland. See Tables 4.11 and 4.19 and Table 19, Annex X.

  49. 49.

    The German counterparts are the Landratsamt Lörrach (the district administration of the city of Lörrach) and the LUBW, the Landesanstalt für Umwelt, Messungen, und Naturschutz Baden-Württemberg (the State Institute for the Environment, Measurements, and Nature Conservation Baden-Württemberg), Interview N° 3.

  50. 50.

    Interviews N° 3 and 4.

  51. 51.

    Interviews N° 3 and 6.

  52. 52.

    English translation: “Cooperation between water management and agriculture.”

  53. 53.

    English translation: “Pest control raw water database.”

  54. 54.

    The remaining money goes into a federal fund and into financing the implementation of the WFD (Interview N° 9).

  55. 55.

    Interview N° 9.

  56. 56.

    IVA, Industrieverband Agrar.

  57. 57.

    Interview N° 9.

  58. 58.

    English translation: Report on the Ruhr water’s quality.

  59. 59.

    Interviews N° 9 and 10.

  60. 60.

    Interview N° 10. The Ruhrverband also took part in the project “Sichere Ruhr,” an RiSKWa project that assessed the effects of micro-pollutants and possible measures to tackle them (see BMBF (2016, p. 7); BMBF et al. (n.d.)) and in the DSADS project investigating how to prevent pharmaceutical residues from entering the sewage system, see Lippeverband (n.d.).

  61. 61.

    Original wording: Ohne die Kooperation der großen Wasserverbände und dem Ministerium passiert nicht viel (Interview N° 12).

  62. 62.

    Interview N° 12.

  63. 63.

    Literal translation: “report chain.” The main initiator was department IV-5 “Pivotal Issues of Water Management, Surface Water and Groundwater Quality, Water Supply” of the MKULNV (Interview N° 9). An emergency service is available 24/7 for such a contingency (Interview N° 11).

  64. 64.

    Interviews N° 9, 11 and 12. Since the actor LANUV.NRW, the actor that raises the alarm, did not answer the questionnaire entirely and thus is not part of the actor sample, the collaborational connections among the actors of the “Meldekette” cannot be retraced within the collaboration network.

  65. 65.

    Interviews N° 10, 12, and 13.

  66. 66.

    Telephone call N° 2 and Interview N° 13.

  67. 67.

    Interview N° 12.

  68. 68.

    Interview N° 13.

  69. 69.

    Interview N° 17.

  70. 70.

    For the improvement of drinking water operators’ filter techniques, the federal state NRW will invest 300 million Euros (Interview N° 9).

  71. 71.

    Interview N° 13.

  72. 72.

    English translation: “My impression is that there is a need for a ‘round table’ to bring all potential actors together and to coordinate cross-border measures. At least the specialist cooperation does not comply with what could be possible and would be desirable.”

  73. 73.

    Interview N° 19.

  74. 74.

    English translation: “Protection of water resources from the Moselle and Sauer rivers against pesticides.”

  75. 75.

    English translation: “Development of strategies for micropollutants in German-Luxembourgian waterbodies,” see University of Luxembourg (2017).

  76. 76.

    Interview N° 19 and Telephone call N° 1.

  77. 77.

    Interview N° 19. The project “EmiPoll—Emission profiles of wastewater treatment plants and evaluation of their removal efficiencies in Luxembourg” lasted from 2015 to 2017 and was financed by the Administration de la Gestion de l’Eau, Luxembourg; see University of Luxembourg (2017).

  78. 78.

    The three rivers Alzette, Sauer, and Moselle pass Luxembourgian territory, making Luxembourg to an up- as well as downstream actor among its riparian neighbors.

  79. 79.

    Telepone call N° 1.

  80. 80.

    Telephone call N° 3 and Interview N° 19.

  81. 81.

    The share of actors belonging to the large strong component in the Basel case study is 92%.

References

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  1. Institute of Environmental Systems Research, Osnabrück University, Osnabrück, Germany

    Laura Mae Jacqueline Herzog

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  1. Laura Mae Jacqueline Herzog
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Herzog, L.M.J. (2020). Empirical Analysis I: On Cooperation. In: Micro-Pollutant Regulation in the River Rhine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36770-1_4

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