PhD Dissertation: Towards more effective water quality governance

Worldwide, countries face challenges to restore and preserve water resources. This dissertation analyses how governance approaches support the realisation of water quality ambitions set out in the European Water Framework Directive. To this end, the connection between the water system and the governing legal and societal systems was explored, using scientific literature and empirical material on governance approaches in the subdomains of drinking water resources, freshwater ecosystems and bathing water in the Netherlands.

This research shows that different disciplinary perspectives exist on the effectiveness of water quality governance, varying from the improvement of the ecosystem (ecology and hydrology), the achievement of requirements set by law (legal studies) to the quality of societal processes regarding participation, transparency and integrity (social science). Combining these perspectives may facilitate the process of setting objectives and their realisation, but does not ensure the desired outcome upfront. If other, conflicting, priorities are set in the societal debate, water quality ambitions cannot be fully realised. 

This research also shows that different objectives set different demands to governance conditions, related to scale, roles and responsibilities of actors who need to be involved and coherence of the legal and policy frameworks in place. Furthermore, relevant governance conditions in the planning phase appear to be different from those in the realisation phase. This explains the difficulty in realising water quality ambitions as well. Research so far has focused on the planning phase rather than the realisation phase.

Choices made in a governance approach (who to involve, availability and use of instruments, measures and monitoring) may therefore influence the water quality improvement that can be achieved. A joint approach from the social-economic, legal and ecological knowledge domain is necessary to overcome such unintended results.