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A Fresh Perspective for Managing Water in California: Insights from Applying the European Water Framework Directive to the Russian River
Ted Grantham, University of California, Berkeley
Juliet Christian-Smith, University of California, Berkeley
G. Mathias Kondolf, University of California, Berkeley
Stefan Scheuer, University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Water Resources Center Contribution #208. ISBN-13: 978-0-9788896-2-3; ISBN-10: 0-9788896-2-2
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ABSTRACT: Throughout the world there is increasing public awareness of the importance of sustainable water
management to meet both growing human demands and ecosystem needs. Predictions of increased
climate variability and indicators of ecological and water quality deterioration have made water
management a salient political issue, particularly in arid climate regions such as western North America
and the Iberian Peninsula. In recent years, substantial effort has been focused on adopting sustainable
water use practices and mitigating the impacts to natural rivers and streams resulting from human
activities. Yet the restoration of natural biological communities has been more difficult than anticipated.
Our inability to effectively restore and protect rivers and groundwater sources are in part due to the scale
of environmental damage inflicted upon them, but also are a consequence of the legal and institutional
frameworks under which water is managed. Assessments of the current state of the world’s water
resources suggest that conventional approaches to water management will be inadequate to sustainably
balance human and ecosystem needs into the future. Furthermore, as nations around the world struggle
with water management challenges, there has been little explicit attempt for one region to learn from the
experience of another in approaching common problems.
The European Union’s Water Framework Directive (WFD) defines a new strategy for meeting human
water demands while protecting environmental functions and values and may be helpful in informing
water management practices and policies in other regions of the world. In the report we explore how
the management approach described under the WFD compares to the legal and institutional system of a
California river basin, managed under distinctly different principles and objectives. Through a theoretical
application of the WFD, we highlight the critical water management challenges of northern California’s
Russian River basin and use the Directive’s approach to develop strategic recommendations for water
management reform.
SUGGESTED CITATION:
Ted Grantham, Juliet Christian-Smith, G. Mathias Kondolf, and Stefan Scheuer,
"A Fresh Perspective for Managing Water in California: Insights from Applying the European Water Framework Directive to the Russian River"
(March 1, 2008).
University of California Water Resources Center.
Contributions.
Paper 208.
http://repositories.cdlib.org/wrc/contributions/208
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