Abstract
Climate change is associated with severe weather events also in the UK, such as alternating periods of flooding and drought. This article discusses how this increasingly important environmental challenge can be regulated. Current key regulatory tools for preventing and managing drought are drought planning, drought orders and permits, as well as the revocation and modification of abstraction licences. The article develops the metaphor of a governance space in order to understand how environmental science and economics knowledge practices inform the mobilization of these key regulatory tools. This builds on literature about the regulatory space metaphor, and further advances it by conceiving of law and information, two key resources for institutional actors in a governance space, as mediated by discourses. The article develops this argument by, first, reviewing in the introductory sections key provisions of European Union (EU) and English law in relation to regulatory tools for preventing water shortages and managing drought. It further develops this analysis in the subsequent section by examining what environmental science and economics knowledges are generated when particular regulatory tools for preventing or managing drought are applied. In the following main section the article then critically reviews literature about the regulatory space metaphor. It identifies a positivist understanding of information and law as a limitation of some of this literature. By building on contributions to this literature that adopt a discourse perspective, it suggests that law and information should be understood as discursively mediated. Building and maintaining reputations for effective drought management is one example of a discourse that mediates linked legal and information resources for drought management.
Highlights
Drought in the UK?Drought is a significant environmental challenge in the UK.[1]
The article develops the metaphor of a governance space in order to understand how environmental science and economics knowledge practices inform the mobilization of these key regulatory tools
Where the legal framework does not require one of the specific comprehensive environmental science knowledges to be produced, such as a Water Framework Directive (WFD) assessment, a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), or Habitats Regulation Assessment (HRA), water companies should—according to Environment Agency (EA) guidance—prepare in any case: an assessment of likely environmental impacts relating to possible drought permits and drought orders as part of the water company’s drought plan.[90]
Summary
Drought is a significant environmental challenge in the UK.[1] In April 2015 the Met Office announced that half way through the month just a third of normal rainfall had occurred, though the Environment Agency (EA) for England declared water levels as adequate.[2] Before that a serious drought in the UK occurred in 2010–12. It affected especially the South-East of England, including agricultural production in this area and the Midlands.[3] But even before the onset of man-made climate change, droughts have been a feature of the hydro-meteorology of the UK for some time. Drought can be understood not just as the result of ‘natural’ factors, such as changed rainfall patterns,[8] and as the result of ‘social’ factors, such as housing and transport policies[9] that have contributed to changed rainfall patterns
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