The aim of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) (2000/60) (WFD) is “to establish a framework for the protection of inland surface waters, transitional waters, coastal waters and ground waters” (CEC, 2000). The Directive calls for integrated catchment management plans to be prepared for all river basins in order to achieve ’good ecological status’ (GES) in all EU waters by 2015. It sets out to provide for sustainable use of water by member states while concurrently protecting aquatic ecosystems and their dependent habitats. This is a change from previous EU Directives dealing with water quality protection which has a narrow focus on a few phyiso-chemical water quality indicators to a broader basket of achievements encompassing not only the certain water quality indicators but also obtaining water bodies with proper ecosystem functioning and good ecological status.

In the effort to implement the WFD, common approaches and goals for water management have been adopted in the EU Member State countries. On the island of Ireland this has lead to the setting up of 8 river basin districts, each which have implemented plans to achieve at a minimum a ’good’ and ’non-deteriorating status’ for surface, underground and coastal waters. (http://www.wfdireland.ie/) An important element of the Directive is that it calls for a consideration of the economic costs and benefits of improvements to ecological status in catchment management plans, along with the introduction of full social cost pricing for water use. Hence, benefits play an important role in the assessment of the proportionality of costs in the implementation of the WFD.

Basin Districts in Ireland

Benefit Transfer 

In order to quantify the value and benefits of improving water bodies to GES, a variety of methods can be used. However often these methods can be expensive and time consuming. In Ireland there are a limited number of valuation studies related to use of water sites, water quality or the implementation of the WFD (Curtis, 2002, Hynes et al., 2007). An alternative method is to use a secondary valuation methodology called ’Benefit Transfer’ (BT). BT is defined as the adaptation of values estimated at one site (study site) through market-based or non-market-based economic valuation techniques to another site (policy site) which has little or no data (Brouwer, 2000). It has the advantages of lower cost and taking less time to complete than primary valuation methodologies.

In this project the benefits of attaining GES under the WFD will be assessed using BT in Irish river basins. The values will be drawn from primary studies carried out throughout Europe. ’Geographic Information Systems’ (GIS) will be used to help in transferring the values by allowing incorporation of spatial distributed data (river catchments, Census of Population 2006 statistics) to estimate values for individual catchments. The use of GIS in BT has been undertaken by various authors in recent years (Troy and Wilson, 2008, Cullinan et al, 2011).

Project Objectives 

·         Collect in a database the relevant value estimates from Irish, UK and other EU peer reviewed studies that have been conducted on water quality and in particular the achievement of “good ecological status” under the WFD.

·         Conduct a BT exercise using the collected value estimates on a number of water bodies in Ireland. A Geographical Information System will be used in the value transfer process to account for the geographical similarities (and differences) between the policy site and the value estimates from the study sites when estimating the value of good ecological status in the water bodies chosen.

·         Undertake a BT validation exercise based on data available from a choice experiment on 2 Irish river basins. 

References 

Brouwer, R. (2000) “Environmental Value Transfer: State of the Art and Future Prospects” Ecological Economics, 32: 137-152