ECONOMICS FOR IWRM: SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL EVALUATION FOR DECISION MAKING AND INCENTIVE MEASURES TO REGULATE USES

Keywords: environmental evaluation, social values, pricing policies, cost recovery, market-based instruments CONTEXT Economic analysis can be considered a support for decision-makers in public policy design and assessment, in particular in the environmental field. The WFD main objective is to reach Good Ecological Status (GES) in 2015 (or 2021 or 2027) and economic instruments are required to build fair water management system to balance uses and to match the WFD environmental objectives. WFD explicitly refers to economic instruments, for example: • art. 4: disproportionate costs • art. 5: economic analysis of water uses • art. 9: recovery of costs for water services • art. 11: program of measures The first main difficulty task for economic analysis is to assess the broad range of values related to water ecosystems services, some of these values are enhanced by social, perception and traditional practice in the use of water and by the environmental, political and institutional context in which water regulation is taken place. The second difficult task is the integration of these values into a decision-making process in order to make more transparent and acceptable any water policies. Members States have already a long tradition in the use of Economic tools. But it seems to be necessary to define a common framework for the use of economic instruments and of market-based tools to support the member states to achieve the WFD requirements. Efficiency for economic instruments is also dependent of the specific and general contexts. Considering the specific context, economics tools quality requires perfect information on each value components and the ecological output. In the same way, attention must focus on uncertainties and the way to reduce them. Considering the general context, efficiency requires to consider economic tools as a single part of a more global management system which is dependant on: * Information * Level of uncertainties * Ecosystem approach * Operational and adaptive governance of the water sector