Abstract
Public participation is central to the IWRM discourse and often associated with claims of improved environmental policy outputs and their implementation. Whilst the involvement of nonstate actors in environmental decision-making has attracted scholarly attention from various angles, our knowledge is scant as to the forces that drive organisational reform towards participatory governance. This article sets out to contribute to this largely neglected research area and explores conditions under which policy-makers would be willing to attend towards more participative water governance. Its ambition is twofold: first, to explore the conditions under which public officials attempt to institutionalise more participatory modes of water governance. To this end, I analyse the implementation of the Directive’s active involvement provision in England and Wales. For many decades, water management in England and Wales had a reputation for being a technocratic exercise. In the past 15 years, however, the Environment Agency has made considerable efforts to lay the foundation for enhanced stakeholder participation. Second, with reference to the case of England and Wales, this study contributes to understanding the difficulties that reformers may meet when it comes to building support within an organisation and to implementing reforms towards participatory governance.
Highlights
Promoted by the Global Water Partnership and international heavyweights such as the UnitedNations, integrated water resources management (IWRM) brings together a number of principles to encourage “the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources in order to maximise economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems” [1]
Based on oral and written evidence, the Select Committee criticised the methods used to assess biological and chemical status and disputed the validity of the findings. It claimed that “there are a number of factors which adversely affect the quality when it is assessed against the criteria set out in the Water Framework Directive” [62] and implied that the indicators developed by the Environment Agency (EA) were not in line with the criteria suggested in the WFD
While the concept of participation has attracted scholarly attention from various angles, our knowledge is scant with regards to the forces that drive organisational reform towards participatory governance
Summary
Promoted by the Global Water Partnership and international heavyweights such as the United. Almost 20 years after the adoption of the Directive, assessments indicate that many European countries have established new forums for participation in water management or have broadened existing ones, and manage their water bodies in a more participatory way than they did ten years ago [9,10] This invites the question under which conditions are state actors willing to attend to participatory decision-making, or to change political structures such that participation can be ensured on a sustained basis. The ambition of this article is twofold: first, to explore the conditions under which public officials attempt to institutionalise more participatory modes of water governance To this end, I analyse the implementation of the WFD’s active involvement provision in England and Wales.
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