Trajectories of agriculture pollution: A policy assessment

Background

Due to its scope and ambition, the Water Framework Directive is one of the most ambitious environmental regulations in the world. Derived from the European Union's efforts to create a joint effort to manage water and protect the environment, the WFD envisioned having good status in all water bodies in the EU by 2015. After 20 years of implementation, Member States have failed to reach the objectives for all water bodies. There is an ongoing discussion in academic and policymakers platforms to explain the existing gap. Some of the reasons include goals that are technically unfeasible, incoherence with other EU policies (like Common Agriculture Pact), and authority scale issues, among others.

Nitrate concentration in groundwater and policy implementation in Spain; Orellana-Macias, et al. (2020)
© adapted from Orellana-Macias, et al., 2020, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10040-020-02184-0, Figure 5


Objectives

Identify the main issues in the WFD implementation that hinders the capacity to reach the objectives
Map and synthesize the policy alternatives that have been suggested in academic and policy maker platform


Hypothesis

Evaluating policy implementation towards water security can gain insight and future improvement 

Participants

Nahed Ben Salem

Sophia Hildebrandt

Seifeddine Jomaa

Rafael Chavez