Europe - UNEP

Rudesheim, Rhine River, Germany. Photo credit: Sandra Arbogast.
national and transboundary waters, it has been
just as influential in promoting cooperation over
transboundary waters in Europe. Through a
combination of key principles, such as achieving
good water status in all EU waters by 2015, and
detailed procedural rules, such as the production
of river basin management plans, the EU WFD is
set to bring about significant changes to the way
water is managed within Europe. Even beyond
the EU region, e.g., in the Dnieper basin, the EU
WFD has influenced the negotiation of basinwide
legal agreements. Moreover, through its
institutional structure the EU is well placed to
address pressing challenges within European
water resource management, such as flood
management and the protection of groundwater.
Despite such positive trends in institutional
capacity building within Europe, from an issuebased
perspective, chapter four highlighted a
number of areas where the institutional capacity
for the management of transboundary waters
could be strengthened. On a positive note, treaty
law shows that European countries have
endorsed the substantive rule of equitable and
reasonable utilisation, and also the duty to take
all appropriate measures to prevent, control and
reduce transboundary impact. However,
establishing the practical procedural rules and
mechanisms that effectively and efficiently
implement the latter substantive rules has proved
to be more problematic. The analysis in chapter
four showed that in certain areas such as
monitoring and assessment, public participation,
and compliance, there were clear gaps within
existing agreements. In addition, little work has
been done in assessing the effectiveness of such
agreements in accordance with their aims and
objectives as more emphasis has been placed on
ensuring compliance with international
agreements. Measuring the effectiveness of
international agreements is strongly dependent
on there being sufficient data of a suitable
standard to evaluate the key joint management
issues within the basin. Similarly public
participation and appropriate compliance
strategies can go a long way to ensuring that
basin-agreements are both implemented and
effective. Useful guidance on how countries can
develop these aspects of water resource
management can be found within the UNECE
and EU framework. However, in many cases lack
of financial resources and the absence of
capacity development measures will be major
impediments to strengthening basin agreements.
This issue thus highlights the role that
international donors should take in developing
basin-wide agreements; a role that has been
clearly illustrated within the case studies and list
of international projects.
Chapter 6. Conclusion — 83