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Public Participation in European Water Management: from Theory to Practice

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Abstract

Public and stakeholder participation in water management is a crucial element in the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). Theoretically, the WFD identifies several advantages of public participation, such as the better use of knowledge and experiences from different stakeholders, increases in public acceptance and reduced litigation, delays, and inefficiencies in implementation. However, few studies have gone as deep, in practical terms, as the existing difficulty to introduce public participation in water management. The aim of this study was to cover this issue. It aims to conduct a literature review on public participation looking for successful social innovation experiences by the EU member states and also for the main limitations and difficulties of implementation detailing the study of the Spanish case.

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Notes

  1. For an interesting debate about the economic value of water in the requirements of WFD see Moran and Dann (2008).

  2. For another interesting study on decision making in urban water management for the case of Austria see Starkl and Brunner (2004).

  3. There are numerous differences between each location, since water services are usually under municipal jurisdiction, but price increases around 50 % have been detected in certain places and, above all, the creation of new tax figures that recharge on citizens water services. Nevertheless, water tariffs can be seen as a powerful management tool in order to promote multiple, possibly conflicting, objectives (Pinto and Marques 2015; García-Rubio et al. 2015).

  4. For a more in-depth study of the case of Madrid, Ruiz-Villaverde et al. (2015b), and De Miguel-Ortega and Sanz-Mulas (2007) are highly recommended.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Economics, University of Granada, Campus Cartuja s/n, Granada, 18071, Spain

    Alberto Ruiz-Villaverde & Miguel A. García-Rubio

  2. Water Research Institute, University of Granada, C/Ramón y Cajal, 4, Granada, 18003, Spain

    Miguel A. García-Rubio

Authors
  1. Alberto Ruiz-Villaverde
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  2. Miguel A. García-Rubio
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Correspondence to Alberto Ruiz-Villaverde.

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Ruiz-Villaverde, A., García-Rubio, M.A. Public Participation in European Water Management: from Theory to Practice. Water Resour Manage 31, 2479–2495 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-016-1355-1

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