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The Water Framework Directive establishes a common framework for EU water policy. One of its guiding principles is the promotion of public participation in water planning and management. In response to this requirement, River Basin Authorities are undertaking public participation and consultation processes as part of the elaboration of the Draft Basin Management Plans. This article describes and analyzes these processes, placing them in the context of wider public discussions and debates over water policy that have taken place in Spain over the past two decades. The paper argues that some of the strengths of Spanish WFD-related public participation processes derive from the significant improvement in the amount of information made available to the public, and from the relationships that are established between different stakeholder groups and between these and the water administration. On the other hand, the lack of credibility and legitimacy of some processes is related to the lack of political leadership and commitment to public participation, to insufficient inter-administrative cooperation, and to the persistence of parallel channels of communication between traditional water users and water managers. The paper also points to some potential areas of improvement such as the methodological design of public participation processes, a clarification of their impact on specific plans and proposals, and a search for tools to adequately inform and incorporate the wider public in water policy debates. Finally, the paper discusses the role that social networks, built around the ideas and goals of the New Water Culture, are playing in water policy debates by demanding more transparent and sustainable water policy decision making. ; Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua. Universidad de Zaragoza.

Los procesos de participación pública implementados a raíz de la Directiva Marco del Agua (DMA) constituyen un importante salto adelante para la democratización de la gestión del agua en España. En el presente texto, a partir de un análisis documental y entrevistas exploratorias, se señalan algunas de las virtudes y debilidades de dichos procesos. En general, se observa que los puntos más problemáticos tienen que ver con la inercia institucional que conforma las relaciones entre los organismos de cuenca y los usuarios tradicionales del agua, así como con la falta de credibilidad que algunos de estos procesos han tenido para algunos de sus potenciales participantes. Como conclusión se advierte la necesidad de pensar nuevos diseños institucionales que respondan a la idea de gobernanza expresada por la DMA. ; The public participation processes that are taking place in Spain as a result of the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) constitutes an important step forward toward the democratization of water management in Spain. Grounded on document analysis and exploratory interviews, this article highlights some of its strengths and weaknesses. In general, the most problematic aspects of these processes are related to their lack of credibility for some potential participants, as well the persistence of an institutional setup for water decision making that strongly favors the long-standing relationship between Basin Management Agencies and traditional water users. The article offers some concluding remarks on the need for a reformed institutional desing for the management of water resources, according to the idea of governance expressed by the WFD.

The process of drafting, approving and implementing the Water Framework Directive (WFD) has played a pivotal role in the water-related political agenda of the Iberian Peninsula. The WFD has provided an institutional impetus for a shift from the dominant hydraulic paradigm towards a new water governance approach. The new approach, known as the New Water Culture (NWC), predated the WFD. It was initiated in Spain and Portugal in the 1990s and has been promoted by a coalition of academics, social activists, and water managers. Given the long tradition and relevance of water debates in Spain and Portugal, the sociopolitical and territorial conflicts surrounding the implementation of the new regulatory framework are of particular significance. Legal debates about the (in)correct transposition of the WFD into Spanish and Portuguese legislation are still unresolved. Legal debates about the (in)correct transposition of the WFD into Spanish and Portuguese legislation are still unresolved. Controversies focus on issues such as the use of economic instruments, for instance cost recovery and the use of public subsidies (a key component of the hydraulic paradigm), as well as the role of public participation in decision making processes. Significant resistance has been mounted by the traditional water policy community, which continues to dominate power structures surrounding water. Throughout the long WFD implementation process, conflicting views and interests have consistently emerged with regard to the diagnosis and identification of existing pressures and the definition, evaluation and implementation of the proposed measures. Controversies have also emerged around the extensive use of exceptions which has allowed the hydraulic paradigm to persist over time. Progress towards the promised governance model, however, is taking place, with significant improvements in transparency, more accurate knowledge regarding the aquatic ecosystems services and the inclusion in water management agencies of more diverse experts including social scientists, biologists and geologists. This paper looks at the role the WFD implementation process is playing in the struggle for the transformation of water policy in Spain and Portugal. It examines this through the lens of the NWC movement.

In the last few years, parallel evolutionary processes in the socio-political, governmental and technological arenas have been providing new pathways for the collaborative generation, coordination and distribution of polycentric information. From a technological perspective, the proliferation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has boosted the availability of information about our planet, along with its storage, processing and dissemination capabilities. The Worldwide Web and satellite and electronic sensors combined with smart phone technologies have also opened new means for social, political and scientific innovation. From a socio-political standpoint, the implementation of policies that encourage the reutilisation of data and protect the right to information of interested parties, together with growing social demands for transparency, have resulted in an increasing number of governments drawing strategies to open up public data. In this context, this paper addresses two main topics that we deem will be key drivers for improved water governance in the near future. First, it discusses new practices of collaborative and distributed generation and disclosure of information for water governance, and the resulting challenges and opportunities afforded by the use of ICTs. Second, it looks at the interplay between the uptake of ICTs and institutional frameworks, social dynamics and technological structures within which they operate to understand the extent to which ICTs affect decision-making processes and contribute to creating alternative spaces for the production of common services or alternative discourses. Despite the advances in open data policies, findings suggest that there remain significant challenges to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by ICTs, mostly derived from the structural conditions of existing models of decision-making, and information generation and management. It seems that the potentialities of ICTs as transformative tools are conditioned by the regeneration of the context within which decisions are made, that is, the democratic process itself.

The European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires EU member states to produce and implement river basin management plans, which are to be designed and updated via participatory processes that inform, consult with, and actively involve all interested stakeholders. The assumption of the European Commission is that stakeholder participation, and institutional adaptation and procedural innovation to facilitate it, are essential to the effectiveness of river basin planning and, ultimately, the environmental impact of the Directive. We analyzed official documents and the WFD literature to compare implementation of the Directive in EU member states in the initial WFD planning phase (2000–2009). Examining the development of participatory approaches to river basin management planning, we consider the extent of transformation in EU water governance over the period. Employing a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach, we map the implementation "trajectories" of 13 member states, and then provide a detailed examination of shifts in river basin planning and participation in four member states (Germany, Sweden, Poland and France) to illustrate the diversity of institutional approaches observed. We identify a general tendency towards increased, yet circumscribed, stakeholder participation in river basin management in the member states examined, alongside clear continuities in terms of their respective pre-WFD institutional and procedural arrangements. Overall, the WFD has driven a highly uneven shift to river basin-level planning among the member states, and instigated a range of efforts to institutionalize stakeholder involvement—often through the establishment of advisory groups to bring organized stakeholders into the planning process.

Grassroots initiatives that aim to defend, protect, or restore rivers and riverine environments have proliferated around the world in the last three decades. Some of the most emblematic initiatives are anti-dam and anti-mining movements that have been framed, by and large, as civil society versus the state movements. In this article, we aim to bring nuance to such framings by analyzing broader and diverse river-commoning initiatives and the state–citizens relations that underlie them. To study these relations we build on notions of communality, grassroots scalar politics, rooted water collectives, and water justice movements, which we use to analyze several collective practices, initiatives, and movements that aim to protect rivers in Thailand, Spain, Ecuador, and Mozambique. The analysis of these cases shows the myriad ways in which river collectives engage with different manifestations of the state at multiple scales. As we show, while some collectives strategically remain unnoticed, others actively seek and create diverse spaces of engagement with like-minded citizen initiatives, supportive non-governmental organizations, and state actors. Through these relations, alliances are made and political space is sought to advance river commoning initiatives. This leads to a variety of context-specific multi-scalar state–citizens relations and river commoning processes in water governance arenas.

The European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires EU member states to produce and implement river basin management plans, which are to be designed and updated via participatory processes that inform, consult with, and actively involve all interested stakeholders. The assumption of the European Commission is that stakeholder participation, and institutional adaptation and procedural innovation to facilitate it, are essential to the effectiveness of river basin planning and, ultimately, the environmental impact of the Directive. We analyzed oficial documents and the WFD literature to compare implementation of the Directive in EU membre states in the initial WFD planning phase (2000-2009). Examining the development of participatory approaches to river basin management planning, we consider the extent of transformation in EU water governance over the period. Employing a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach, we map the implementation "trajectories" of 13 member states, and then provide a detailed examination of shifts in river basin planning and participation in four member states (Germany, Sweden, Poland and France) to illustrate the diversity of institutional approaches observed. We identify a general tendency towards increased, yet circumscribed, stakeholder participation in river basin management in the member states examined, alongside clear continuities in terms of their respective pre-WFD institutional and procedural arrangements. Overall, the WFD has driven a highly uneven shift to river basin-level planning among the member states, and instigated a range of efforts to institutionalize stakeholder involvement-often through the establishment of advisory groups to bring organized stakeholders into the planning process.