Water law, water management and water governance: towards a multidisciplinary approach ensuring coherence, adaptiveness and effectiveness

Susanne Wuijts, Peter Driessen and Marleen van Rijswick

Chapter 31 in Research Handbook on EU Water Law, 2026, pp 565-584 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The preservation of sufficient and good-quality freshwater resources and the management of water safety in times of climate change, large-scale urbanization and industrialization can be regarded as complex challenges. As a consequence, these challenges can only be addressed effectively in a multidisciplinary governance approach in which principles related to legitimacy, solidarity and fairness are ensured and in collaboration with different disciplines across institutional levels and hydrological scales. A thorough understanding of the behaviour of the water system, its pressures and the possible measures, actors and institutions that need to be included, and of the values and possible trade-offs for the other interests at stake, such as those of the agricultural sector, are requirements for such an approach. Furthermore, legal instruments and financial means need to be sufficiently available, as well as instruments, capacity and means of monitoring, enforcement and conflict resolution. In this chapter, the authors describe the role of water management, water law and water governance in this multidisciplinary approach, as well as the objectives that need to be achieved. The chapter provides examples from different analytical frameworks and how these frameworks can be used to assess governance approaches.

Keywords: Multidisciplinary approach; Water and health; Water management; Water law; Water governance; Water Framework Directive (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035336425
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