Sustainable management of transboundary river basins: a line of reasoning

This paper identifies a line of reasoning based on a number of concepts and tools to facilitate river basin management, which have been applied in a case study. For long-term sustainable river basin management, a balance is needed between the human use of the river and its basin, the ecological functioning of the river and receiving waters, and the river's capacity to supply goods and services. To find such a balance a framework is needed that illustrates and clarifies possible trade-offs between economic use and environmental supply by integrating scientific information on cause-effect chains on a catchment scale. A number of concepts and tools are proposed as a basis for this framework. The tools are: (1) indicators that describe the complex interactions and processes in rivers; (2) a suite of linked models that predict the economic, environmental and ecological effect of management measures; (3) an evaluation framework to rank different management alternatives on the basis of three objectives: economic efficiency, spatial equity in costs and benefits and environmental quality of the river and receiving lakes. The concept of environmental quality defines the potential of the river environment (i.e. natural capital) to contribute to human welfare. The concept of environmental functions is used to identify societal interest in natural capital. The concept and tools have been applied in a case study involving the evaluation of four management strategies on nutrient abatement in the Rhine basin. The result of the case study is that economic efficiency is in conflict with spatial equity and environmental quality. Spatial equity is in agreement with environmental quality.