Abstract
The current Water Abstraction License (WAL) regime in Italy is no longer flexible enough to cope with the challenges posed by human-induced climate and global environmental changes. The cornerstones of the current regime were laid down in the 1930s and have remained essentially unchanged ever since. The sole noteworthy reform of the Italian WAL regime was the decentralization of the regulatory competences from the state to the regional authorities in the late 1990s. In this paper, we review the WAL regimes across the administrative regions comprising the Po River Basin District (PRBD), the largest and economically most important in Italy. PRBD’s WAL regime includes a rigid and scattered WAL normative that hinders the performance of bottom-up conflict resolution mechanisms at a basin scale; a water pricing scheme that does not reflect the cost of water conveyance and use, and does not encourage efficient water allocation; and the lack of a central WAL register, which delays and in some cases impedes an environmental impact assessment for issuing new licenses or renewing existing ones, and does not allow prioritizing applications according to their full economic value. We argue these deficiencies may compromise both the integrity of riverine and water dependent ecosystems and the economic uses of water. This paper offers insights that can inform reform of water allocations in the PRBD and elsewhere in Italy and in Europe.
Highlights
Water scarcity, along with more frequent and severe droughts, are threats that may undo the efforts to achieve the good ecological status of the European water bodies [1], and short-circuit the performance of a wide array of sectors driving economic growth [2]
Po River Basin District (PRBD)’s Water Abstraction License (WAL) regime includes a rigid and scattered WAL normative that hinders the performance of bottom-up conflict resolution mechanisms at a basin scale; a water pricing scheme that does not reflect the cost of water conveyance and use, and does not encourage efficient water allocation; and the lack of a central WAL register, which delays and in some cases impedes an environmental impact assessment for issuing new licenses or renewing existing ones, and does not allow prioritizing applications according to their full economic value
The cooperative decision of the Drought Steering Committee (DSC) was sanctioned by signing a Memorandum of Interest (MoI, in Italian: Protocollo d’Intesa), which stipulated the commitments of irrigators to reduce water withdrawal by 25% to 50%, and hydropower operators to release more water from Alpine reservoirs and large regulated lakes
Summary
Along with more frequent and severe droughts, are threats that may undo the efforts to achieve the good ecological status of the European water bodies [1], and short-circuit the performance of a wide array of sectors driving economic growth [2]. The EU Water Policy Review [2,7] has noted some progress, though as yet insufficient, in drought management in Europe, and in the application of economic principles (e.g., cost recovery and water pricing) It has encouraged, cautiously, the use of market mechanisms (e.g., the water right trading scheme) where this represents a value-added increase [2]. Successive reforms have designated a more flexible WAL regime that is able to channel water abstractions towards economically more efficient uses [27,28,29]. The temporal horizons for which the licenses are issued do not take into account the changing availability of water resources in the medium and long-term, as a result of climate change Nor do they consider changes in the demand for water driven by population growth and economic development. From our analysis of the PRBD case study, we propose recommendations on priorities for a national water abstraction reform, in line with international best practices on water abstraction reform [37,38,39]
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