Climate Change and the European Water Dimension - Agri ...

Chapter V .C. Climate Change, Ecological Status and the
Water Framework Directive
V.C.1. Introduction
The Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC; WFD) creates a legislative framework
to manage, use, protect, and restore surface water and groundwater resources in the
European Union. The WFD approaches water management at the scale of major
river catchments (river basins), which in many cases include several countries. The
WFD requires the establisment of a ‘river basin management plan’ (RBMP) for each
of the river basins. The RBMP is a detailed account of how the environmental
objectives (i.e. good ecological status of natural water bodies and good ecological
potential of heavily modified and artificial water bodies) are to be achieved by 2015.
For those countries that can demonstrate that this is not feasible without
disproportionate economic and social costs, the Directive allows the possibility for a
delay until 2030. This sets a time scale for restoration of the water bodies during
which a considerable change in climate can be expected. Although it is stated that
“… this Directive should provide mechanisms to address obstacles to progress in
improving water status when these fall outside the scope of Community water
legislation, with a view to developing appropriate Community strategies for
overcoming them” (WFD, Article 47), climate change and its possible impact on water
bodies has been left out of the scope of the WFD; the term “climate” does not appear
in the text of the Directive.
The WFD defines ecological status as “… an expression of the quality of the
structure and functioning of aquatic ecosystems associated with surface waters …”.
(WFD, Article 2: 21). The assessment of the ecological status in the WFD requires
classification of water bodies in five quality classes using a Ecological Quality Ratio
(EQR), which is a ratio between reference conditions and measured status of the
biological quality elements. Reference conditions should equal almost natural
conditions. As shown elsewhere in this report, the anticipated effects of the climate
change will affect most of the physical, chemical and biological parameters of water
bodies used for ecological quality assessment. Although in some cases, climate
change may bring a relief to environmental problems and help to achieve the
restoration goals set by the Directive (e.g. in areas with a prospected increase in
precipitation), often pressures to aquatic ecosystems will increase as a result of
climate change. As a consequence, these effects cannot be mitigated in the context
of the river basin management plan.
In this chapter we discuss the conceptual impacts of the climate change on the
process and requirements of the ecological status assessment in the WFD. Using
some examples we consider the various steps in the classification and assessment
where the CC effects should be considered. We argue that reference conditions
cannot be considered as static but will change as a consequence of climate change
impacts on physical and chemical conditions of water bodies. The review of the river
basin characterization every 6 years, as required by the WFD, will also include reevaluation
of reference conditions. As a consequence the restoration targets (i.e. the
good ecological status) will also need to be evaluated periodically.
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