scholarly journals Stakeholder discourse and water management – implementation of the participatory model CATCH in a Northern Italian alpine sub-catchment

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 317-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. S. Lupo Stanghellini ◽  
D. Collentine

Abstract. The Water Framework Directive (WFD, directive 2000/60/EC) was created to ensure the sustainable use of water resources in the European Union. A central guideline included throughout the directive is a call for the participation of stakeholders in the management of these resources. Involving stakeholders is an important step to ensure that catchment management plans take into consideration local experience in the development of these plans and the impact of the plans on local interests. This paper describes and analyses the results of a series of workshops to facilitate implementation of the WFD at a catchment level based on the stakeholder participation model, CATCH. To test the usefulness of the CATCH model, developed for water management in a catchment area, a sub-catchment in an alpine valley in the north-east of Italy, the Alta Valsugana in the Province of Trento, was chosen as the setting for a series of workshops. In this valley water is fundamental for activities associated with agriculture, domestic use, energy production, sports and recreation. In the recent past the valley has had serious problems related to water quality and quantity. Implementation of water management plans under the WFD may lead to conflicts within the catchment between different stakeholder interest groups. Including stakeholders in the development of management plans not only follows the guidelines of the WFD but also could result in a more locally adapted and acceptable plan for the catchment. A new stakeholder analysis methodology was developed and implemented in order to identify the relevant stakeholders of the area and then two sets of workshops involving the key stakeholders identified were conducted in Spring 2006. The CATCH meetings were a new experience for the participants, who had to deal with both the principles of the WFD in general and the participation requirement in particular. During the meetings, the CATCH model played a very important role in structuring the participatory process. It provided a general framework consisting of a sequence of steps that helped the participants to reach the goal of the process: the identification and evaluation of measures to improve water management in the catchment. This test of the CATCH model showed it to be a dynamic and flexible tool, useful for structuring and guiding the participation process, without imposing undue restrictions on influencing the outcome of stakeholder participation in a small catchment.

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 1729-1765
Author(s):  
P. S. Lupo Stanghellini ◽  
D. Collentine

Abstract. The Water Framework Directive (WFD; directive 2000/60/EC) was created to ensure the sustainable use of water resources in the European Union. A central guideline included throughout the directive is a call for the participation of stakeholders in the management of these resources. Involving stakeholders is an important step to ensure that catchment management plans take into consideration local experience in the development of these plans and the impact of the plans on local interests. This paper describes and analyses the results of a series of workshops to facilitate implementation of the WFD at a catchment level based on the stakeholder participation model, CATCH. To test the usefulness of the stakeholder participation model CATCH for water management in a catchment area, a sub-catchment in an alpine valley in the north-east of Italy, the Alta Valsugana in the Province of Trento, was chosen as the setting for a series of workshops. In this valley water is fundamental for activities associated with agriculture, domestic use, energy production, sports and recreation. In the recent past the valley has had serious problems related to water quality and quantity. Implementation of water management plans under the WFD may lead to conflicts within the catchment between different stakeholder interest groups. Including stakeholders in the development of management plans not only follows the guidelines of the WFD but also could result in a more locally adapted and acceptable plan for the catchment. A new stakeholder analysis methodology was developed and implemented in order to identify the relevant stakeholders of the area and then two sets of workshops involving the key stakeholders identified were conducted in Spring 2006. The CATCH meetings were a new experience for the participants, who had to deal with both the principles of the WFD in general and the participation requirement in particular. During the meetings, the CATCH model played a very important role in structuring the participatory process. It provided a general framework consisting of a sequence of steps that helped the participants to reach the goal of the process; the identification and evaluation of measures to improve water management in the catchment. This test of the CATCH model showed it to be a dynamic and flexible tool, useful for structuring and guiding the participation process, without imposing undue restrictions on influencing the outcome of stakeholder participation in a small catchment.


Water Policy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 675-694 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Sabina Lupo Stanghellini

Water is a central resource supporting human activities and ecosystems and it is required for different purposes and uses that are often conflicting. Existing water-related problems are expected to increase and conventional water resource management systems are not likely to be able to face future challenges. There is the need for an integrated water resources management, which should be participatory, technically and scientific informed and which should be based on bottom-up approach. The Directive 2000/60/EC is based on principles of integrated planning and calls for stakeholder involvement in water management. Involving stakeholders is an important step to ensure that catchment management plans take into consideration local needs, experiences and interests. This paper presents a stakeholder analysis methodology that was developed to support stakeholder participation in water management. The methodology was implemented as a preliminary step in a stakeholder participation project in an alpine sub-catchment in Northern Italy.


Climate ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdullah A. Alsumaiei

Efficient water management plans should rely on quantitative metrics for assessing water resource shortage scenarios. This study develops a simplified precipitation index (PI) requiring precipitation data only in order to assess hydrometeorological droughts affecting various hydrological systems. The PI index is inspired by the famous Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), and it aims to provide the same indication for drought severity and duration while overcoming the disadvantage of needing hydrological data normalization. Avoiding hydrological data normalization overcomes the non-satisfactory results of this procedure that were reported in previous studies. Analysis of groundwater drought drivers in the arid region of Kuwait is presented to test the index applicability at timescales 12 and 24 months using available historical precipitation data from 1958 to 2017. A bivariate joint probability analysis was conducted by Clayton copula to assess the occurrence of certain drought severities and durations. The results showed that PI is comparable to the original SPI and provides drought severity linearly propagating with respect to time. This index constitutes a simple means to help water managers assess and describe the impact of droughts in precipitation-controlled systems and establish appropriate water management plans.


Water Policy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 396-416
Author(s):  
Vítor João Pereira Domingues Martinho

Abstract Efficient water use in agriculture depends on a number of variables, from the farmers’ perceptions of these concerns, to the socioeconomic dimensions. In any case, it is important to bring about more insight into these fields, specifically to stimulate the design of adjusted management plans and policies which increase water efficiency on farms. These are relevant motivations to perform more research in these fields. In this framework, the main objective of this study is to analyse the water management efficiency of the agricultural sector in the regions (NUTS 2) and countries in the European Union. For this purpose, statistical information from the Eurostat was considered and an approach based on the Cobb–Douglas theory of production was used which combines DEA (data envelopment analysis) with factor and cluster analysis. Also performed was qualitative analysis with the Atlas.ti software. This approach that combines qualitative analysis with DEA–factor-cluster analysis brings new outcomes to the literature. The insights obtained from this study reveal that it is possible to improve water management without compromising the agricultural output and while still improving farmers’ profit. For example, in some French regions, almost 100% of the surface water withdrawal for agricultural irrigation could be saved.


Author(s):  
Victorita Radulescu

Black Sea represents a direct link between the European Union, EU candidate countries and some Asian countries such as Russia, Georgia, etc. During the last decades, the Black Sea has been confronted with unexpected environmental problems. In the south part of the Romanian seashore has appeared erosion, in the North-East part of the Black Sea appeared a massive algae development, followed by modification of the maritime biological balance. In parallel, the maritime water parameters have been changed, partly due to the water discharged from the main rivers as Danube, Dnieper, Dniester, partly from the amount of freshwater from deep currents new appeared in the last decades, and partly due to the impact of the pollutant sources. Firstly, are mentioned some data, based on the local measurements and registered data, which underlines the actual situation, referring at the existing sources of pollution, the hydrocarbons and ions concentration, etc. with immediate consequences on the local equilibrium of the marine bio-system. The registered Turkish accidents with spilled oil briefly mentioned, were followed in a short term by a process of nitrification, with many consequences. Next are presented the appeared modifications, registered in the Black Sea fauna, some endangered species, correlated with the simultaneous apparition of some invasive species. Finally, some conclusions and references are presented.


2006 ◽  
Vol 54 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 395-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Wolf ◽  
J. Klinger ◽  
I. Held ◽  
H. Hötzl

The management of urban groundwater resources is directly linked to urban water supply and drainage concepts. A proper integration of groundwater into urban water management plans is recommended for long-term planning. The paper describes the development of a new modelling suite which addresses the urban water and solute balance in a holistic way. Special focus has been placed on the assessment of the impact of sewer leakage on groundwater in four case study cities. Tools for the prediction of sewer leakage including the assessment of uncertainties are now available. Field investigations in four European case study cities were able to trace the influence of sewer leakage on urban groundwater using microbiological indicators and pharmaceutical residues.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
ARUNA V ◽  
Suja R ◽  
Rajalakshmi C R

Abstract As communities grows, the area covered by rooftops and concreted surfaces increases. Rain water which would have infiltrated, flows across these impermeable surface carrying pollutants along the way. This causes frequent flash floods in urban areas. Effective storm water management is needed for the sustainable development of communities. In this study the runoff generation for a small catchment is quantified and the effectiveness of low impact development (LID) practices (permeable pavements (pp) & vegetative swales) in mitigating the runoff at the source itself is studied using Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). The most influential design storm and the soil type pertaining to the study area were the determining factors for evaluating the impact of LID’s. The steady flow model and Hortons’s infiltration parameters for the soil type in study area were adopted for the analysis. The permeable pavements and swales performed well in reducing the runoff but the swales were less efficient in reducing the runoff, and the runoff reduction potential of permeable pavements and swales are 4.48% and 2.05% respectively. Runoff reduction is more efficient in case of combination of permeable pavements and vegetative swales as LIDs. The percentage reduction in runoff is about 6.05% and the efficiency of the combination type LID is about 17%. The results from simulation show that the low impact development practices are efficient in mimicking the pre-development hydrologic conditions of the landscape to a great extent.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fares Laouacheria ◽  
Said Kechida ◽  
Moncef Chabi

Abstract Flood modelling is an effective way to manage the stormwater network in cities. It aims to understand and predict the behaviour of stormwater network so that it can test and evaluate effective solutions to structural and operational problems. So simulation modelling stays a preoccupation for building a successful hydraulic modelling in urban areas. This study investigates the impact of the design rainfall on the hydraulic modelling results for the Azzaba stormwater network located in the North-East of Algeria by using the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). Four scenarios of design rainfall events were compared for 10, 25 and 50-year return periods, where we used double triangle and composite curves for the design rainfall event definition. The results show the impact of the choice of design rainfall on the behaviour of the stormwater network, from which the results of simulation by the double triangle method for the short durations represents a great risk on the probability that the stromwater network can overflow and flood the city, with a difference in peak discharge estimated at 62.97% and 58.94% for 2 h and 3 h events compared to the peak discharge simulated by the composite rainfall method.


2000 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luigi Leonori ◽  
Manuel Muñoz ◽  
Carmelo Vázquez ◽  
José J. Vázquez ◽  
Mary Fe Bravo ◽  
...  

This report concerns the activities developed by the Mental Health and Social Exclusion (MHSE) Network, an initiative supported by the Mental Health Europe (World Federation of Mental Health). We report some data from the preliminary survey done in five capital cities of the European Union (Madrid, Copenhagen, Brussels, Lisbon, and Rome). The main aim of this survey was to investigate, from a mostly qualitative point of view, the causal and supportive factors implicated in the situation of the homeless mentally ill in Europe. The results point out the familial and childhood roots of homelessness, the perceived causes of the situation, the relationships with the support services, and the expectations of future of the homeless mentally ill. The analysis of results has helped to identify the different variables implicated in the social rupture process that influences homelessness in major European cities. The results were used as the basis for the design of a more ambitious current research project about the impact of the medical and psychosocial interventions in the homeless. This project is being developed in 10 capital cities of the European Union with a focus on the program and outcome evaluation of the health and psychosocial services for the disadvantaged.


2017 ◽  
pp. 114-127
Author(s):  
M. Klinova ◽  
E. Sidorova

The article deals with economic sanctions and their impact on the state and prospects of the neighboring partner economies - the European Union (EU) and Russia. It provides comparisons of current data with that of the year 2013 (before sanctions) to demonstrate the impact of sanctions on both sides. Despite the fact that Russia remains the EU’s key partner, it came out of the first three partners of the EU. The current economic recession is caused by different reasons, not only by sanctions. Both the EU and Russia have internal problems, which the sanctions confrontation only exacerbates. The article emphasizes the need for a speedy restoration of cooperation.


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