Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This chapter explores the links between drought governance and the vulnerability of freshwater for drinking water supply, with a focus on drought adaptation. The public awareness of drought and water scarcity risks in such a flood-prone region is still low. However, the fact that fresh water availability for drinking water supply is threatened not only by a decrease in water availability, related to climate variability and climate change, but also due to the increase in water demand, related to population and economic growth, this issue can potentially motivate the introduction of drought and water scarcity risks into the public and political agenda. Even if the northwestern European countries in this study have similar climatic settings, other aspects of their contexts can be quite contrasting in each pilot case. Depending on where the freshwater reservoir is placed, upstream or downstream within the catchment, different levels and scales are mobilized to tackle water management challenges. The priority hierarchy of water uses in case of drought can also be surprisingly different in neighboring countries. Even if some actions, as the expansion of spatial water networks connectivity, have started to improve the robustness of drinking water systems, the solutions that require a paradigm shift to a most systemic strategy including water demand control remain out of the agenda and could greatly improve the resilience of the region to drought and water scarcity risk.

To understand the relationship between nature and water scarcity and drought problems, we turn our attention to five case studies to illuminate key points. We introduce the areas and their specific relationship to nature and ways in which drought is already impacting natural areas and their ability to cope. The policy context is also elaborated to provide insight to the current milieu, including relevant actors and relevant economic and social challenges.

This chapter proposes a comparative approach of the drought governance context in the six regions studied. In sum, the governance context for drought resilience policies and measures in most of the regions studied can be regarded to currently be “intermediate”. The implementation of the governance assessment tool does not allow a clear picture of the drought and water scarcity governance context in those NW regions. The governance appears to be half capable of providing a favourable context in terms of the actors and decision levels involved in all of the regions, but does not provide a favourable context to develop and implement a coherent drought policy. The chapter also outlines the specificities of the regions for each of the cross cutting issues (i.e., nature, fresh water and agriculture). Three main issues can be pointed out in order to characterise the way the sectors needs are taken into account: A water governance in general which gives more weight to representatives of economic interests than to environmental ones; a hierarchy as regards water uses in case of water scarcity which favours water supplies and contrasted initiatives which try to better take into account drought in/for all sectors.