Analysis of instruments for assessment of planned investments in water management

Abstract

Integrated water resource management is a process oriented towards sustainable development through the shaping, allocation and monitoring of water resources, taking into account social, economic and environmental objectives. The water management policy realized in Poland is based on the idea of sustainable development and requires the use and application of appropriate evaluation tools in the process of socialized decision-making concerning the initiation and realization of investments with an impact on water management. This study discusses methods of assessment of planned investments, such as: cost and benefit analysis, and environmental impact assessment. These are balanced against the method recommended by the World Commission on Dams – A New Framework for DecisionMaking, as well as the main guidelines of the Positional Analysis (PA) method based on Ecological Economics. The latter opposes Neoclassical Economics, as well as Environmental and Natural Resources Economics. Integrated water resource management is a philosophy that informs the attitude that considers the balanced shaping of water resources as the most important objective of managerial activities. Those responsible for the decision making are obliged to take into consideration the wider context that accompanies such a process. They search for and invite many stakeholders to participate in the decision-making process, creating or utilizing the platforms for exchanging often opposing opinions that are present in democratic societies. In such activities, multi-criteria assessment may be a useful instrument, taking into consideration the coincidence of many, often equivalent, objectives, and utilizing a multi-element set of selection criteria. This paper emphasizes the functional values of the multi-criteria evaluation model for an investment, which is based on sustainable development objectives.