The Example of Institutionalizing River Basin Management
through the EC-Water Framework Directive

The aim of WaterScale is to explore the relevance of scales for Environmental Governance by combining concepts from different social sciences, namely Political Science and Human Geography. Empirically, the role of scales and scalar problems is analyzed with the example of implementing the Water Framework Directive (WFD) in two German sub-basins.

The collaborate project consists of the two individual projects GoScaLE and RescalE.


Project summary

The achievement of environmental and sustainability goals is dependent on resolving multifaceted scalar problems: political-administrative levels of decision-making often do not match natural scale-levels and thus produce spill-offs. At the same time, political levels are nested. The growing importance of the EU level in environmental governance is accompanied by tendencies to re-transfer responsibilities to lower levels and integrate multiple non-state actors. Task-specific governance levels are being created across existing systems of hierarchical governance, for example to improve the fit with natural scale levels. Such processes of rescaling create considerable pressure for existing institutions to adapt, especially in the Member States and regions of the EU, but also for shifts in the power and scope of non-state actors. As a result, the effectiveness and efficiency of environmental governance is affected by scalar problems as are issues of legitimacy and power distribution.

The EC Water Framework Directive can be considered a showcase of current spatial rescaling processes in European environmental policy. Firstly, the WFD strengthens the EU level as well as local sub-national structures. Secondly, the directive institutionalizes the planning and management of water resources on the level of river basins, which represent hydrological in contrast to existing political-administrative scale dimensions. In Germany, however, river basin management remains the responsibility of the federal states (Länder), which leads to parallel governance scales. Thirdly, by institutionalizing the active involvement of non-state actors, the directive strengthens local levels of decision-making.

Within two multi-scalar case studies - the catchments of the Hase and the Wupper in Germany- WaterScale empirically compares the implementation of the Water Framework Directive. Basing on the regional scale of the case studies, the project will expand the view to the river basin, national and European level as well as narrow it down to the local level. Different players on these levels, for example the working groups on the Common Implementation Strategy (CIS), national and federal ministries, River Basin Authorities, NGOs and their interactions will be studied. Adding to this “vertical” perspective is the “horizontal” view that focusses on the overlapping of different scales, particularly political-administrative and natural scales.