C M Lorenz | PubMed Health

PubMed2002

Integrated economic-ecological analysis and evaluation of management strategies on nutrient abatement in the Rhine basin.

Management of river basins involves the making of informed choices about the desired levels of economic activities and ecosystem functioning in the catchment. Information on the economic and ecological effects of measures as well as their spatial distribution is therefore needed. This paper proposes the following instruments to support decision-making in river basins: (1) the linking of models and indicators to describe the economic and ecological effects of management actions and their spatial distribution and (2) an extended evaluation framework that aims to evaluate management actions on three objectives for sustainable river management. These are cost-effectiveness, spatial equity, and environmental quality. This paper illustrates the potential of these instruments for river basin management by a case-study on nutrient management in the Rhine basin. In this case-study four nutrient abatement strategies are formulated, based on policies of the International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine and the North Sea Commission. These strategies are analysed and evaluated on their contribution to the three management objectives. Results show that none of these strategies score highest on cost-effectiveness, spatial equity and environmental quality simultaneously. It appears that cost-effectiveness is in conflict with environmental quality, whereas spatial equity and cost-effectiveness show quite close correspondence. This means that a trade-off has to be made between costs and spatial equity on the one hand, and environmental standards on the other hand. This paper offers a framework to make these trade-offs more explicit and provides quantitative information on cause-effect relationships, economic and environmental effects and the spatial distribution of these effects for various management strategies. This information can be particularly useful in the development of compromises required to establish international agreement and co-operation.

Conservation of Natural Resources↗

PubMed2001

Indicators for transboundary river management.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the potential of indicators for integrated river basin management and to develop a set of indicators for the management of transboundary river basins. An indicator, comprising a variable or some aggregation of variables, describes a system or process such that it has significance beyond the face value of its components. Integrated river basin management takes into account policies and measures for the multifunctional use of rivers on a catchment scale and associated institutional changes. Indicators are useful instruments for this process for two reasons. Firstly, they meet the information need of policy- and decision-makers. Secondly, indicators can be used to structure the definition and description of information needs and collection of information between the different international, institutional, and sectoral management levels. The development of indicators involves a number of steps: definition of aim, construction of conceptual model, selection of variables, comparison with selection criteria, database assessment, and indicator selection. In this paper these steps are discussed and specified for integrated river basin management. This results in a set of indicators describing the pressure to the river, the state of the river ecosystem, the impact to goods and services provided by the river, and the societal response. The proposed set of indicators measured at a river basin scale provides integrated information on the use and supply of goods and services, underlying cause-effect relationships and possible trade-offs and their spatial distribution (e.g., upstream versus downstream). Furthermore, we propose a division of tasks and responsibilities for river basin management with regard to the development of indicators, data collection, and their application in decision-making.

Conservation of Natural Resources↗