Planning and Management of Lakes and Reservoirs: An Integrated Approach to Eutrophication


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<Planning and Management of Lakes and Reservoirs:
An Integrated Approach to Eutrophication>

CHAPTER 3. POLICY, INSTITUTIONAL, AND REGULATORY FRAMEWORK

3.6. Regulatory Framework

Here, the regulatory framework is considered to be configured by the set of laws, decrees, resolutions, guidelines, standards, and, in general, regulations, that objectively establish the conditions, criteria, procedures, and requisites that should be complied with by all citizens in order to ensure that their activities in use of natural resources and protection of the environment are carried out attending the principles, goals, and policies adopted by the State. It also establishes the sanctions and penalties to be applied by administrative or judiciary authorities when regulations fail to be complied with.

Management of eutrophication of water bodies demands the effective application of a broad set of structural and non-structural actions to cope with untreated sewage from cities, industrial discharges, and non-point pollution from agricultural activities and urban run-off. These represent the main sources of contamination of rivers, aquifers, and coastal zones.

End of pipe measures to avoid point source pollution sources from industries and urban settlements require large investments in effluent treatment facilities. Public and private investors demand proper institutional, legal, and regulatory scenarios to operate cost-efficiently.

Waste reduction measures, as well as control of diffuse pollution, are more prone to non- structural measures, which pose an even higher demand on the institutional and regulatory framework. These needs have been accounted for in the recommendations of the Conference on Water Resources Assessment and Management in LAC, 1996, which states the "need to elaborate or update water related legislation for the regulation of surface and groundwater use, create incentives for state and private funding, as well as the effective and beneficial use of water, in the light of the juridical security of water rights and the protection of water resources and the environment".

The development of compatible environmental laws and regulations is a recurrent recommendation at expert forums, since it is recognized that an adequate legal framework of rules and regulations should be in place to facilitate actions on water related sector activities. Also, the legislation specific to the needs of a given water sector should be consistent with, and stem from, general legislation for the management of water resources.

The ultimate goal of the regulatory framework is inducing appropriate behaviour of the society, which is, in our case, towards sustainable management of natural resources and, in particular, water resources and aquatic ecosystems. It is not surprising to find that many approaches have been tried for a long time according to changing political, economic, and cultural trends. These approaches have usually been closely connected to the role assigned to the State to provide direction for economic and social development. As mentioned above, the said role has been subject to intensive review in the last decades, evolving from the paternalism of the old days to doing without that which characterizes the free market economy model of recent times.

Command and control, market-based incentives, and voluntary action of the private sector, identify some of the most common policy options. Since changing behaviour involves cultural transformations, it is now accepted that the best solution is a weighted combination of these approaches in the context of an intensive effort of environmental education and awareness rising at all levels of society as prerequisites for active and effective citizen's participation.

Agenda 21 states that proposals for greater pollution control and prevention depend on the right combination of economic and regulatory mechanisms for their success, backed by adequate monitoring and surveillance and supported by an enhanced capacity to address environmental issues on the part of local governments.

It is widely recognized that the prevention of environmental damages has proved to be more cost-efficient than their remediation Even though pollution prevention sometimes has a higher initial cost than discharging untreated wastes, experience shows that in the long run it is cheaper than remediation. Wastewater, especially that which is not heavily polluted, can often be used for other purposes, such as industrial cooling and sometimes for irrigation. To encourage pollution prevention, it is important to apply the Polluter Pays principle (Comprehensive Assessment of Freshwater Resources, 1997). It is clear that the regulatory framework should stress prevention measures and that control activities, including monitoring, should contribute to it by issuing early warnings and feedback inputs to optimize preventive actions. Environmental ambient quality and emission standards, land use planning, environmental impact assessments, and permit and licensing procedures are considered key elements of any regulatory framework and, together with economic incentives, configure the basic set of tools for inducing sustainable management of water resources.

Although all these tools complement each other and therefore need to be incorporated into the policy framework, their development, particularly in developing countries, appears to be quite heterogeneous and predominantly sector. Some of these tools, such as permits and licensing procedures or emission standards, have been implemented earlier and their use has become quite generalized in many countries, particularly regarding the allocation of water uses and pollution control. The application of "polluter pays" principle has been closely related to the enforcement of emission standards and has generated quite a controversy when its unsuccessful applications allowed to think of it as a "right to pollute". Others, such as environmental impact assessments, have become widely applied in recent decades to an increasing number of development projects, to a large extent due to the pressure exerted by international funding agencies.

Unfortunately, ambient quality standards and land-use planning have not followed the same trend in most developing countries. This is not surprising since both tools have in common the fact that they make explicit, in quantitative terms, the expectations of the community regarding the environment they desire to live with. This is a highly controversial question, particularly when poverty and social unbalances constitute the main issues which development is confronted with. Also, they have in common the need for a reliable and comprehensive set of baseline data on natural resources and information on social and environmental conditions which is usually lacking in most countries.

To illustrate the issue, Box 3.7 describes the current situation in Argentina with regard to effluent and water quality standards, which may reflect the situation in many developing countries. Box 3.8 draws attention to some relevant concepts about policy and the regulatory framework at the global level recently elaborated by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Box 3.7 Discharge and Water Quality Standards in Argentina

Discharge standards

As has happened in many other countries, the origin of the first regulations in Argentina limiting the discharge of wastewater into sewage systems, rivers, and other receiving bodies, originated in the water supply and sanitation sector and its need for protecting the water sources from pollution. At the time the former government owned the national agency for Water Supply and Sanitation (OSN), this agency provided services to urban settlements within the entire country, and the emission standards were applied nationwide. The enforcing national agency was at the same time responsible for monitoring and controlling their compliance. When the agency was decentralized in 1980, its competence became reduced to the city of Buenos Aires, and the surrounding metropolitan area served by the system. Each province took over the water supply and sanitation services in their areas, facing the need to establish their own regulatory systems. Some of them updated and improved it substantially, others adopted it with minor changes, and others did not enforce quantitative standards. At the national level, the regulatory and control functions of the former national agency were transferred to the National Secretary of Natural Resources and Sustainable Development when it was created in 1991, being since then applicable to all territories under national jurisdiction. In practice it is limited to the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires. As a consequence of this process there exists a significant heterogeneity in the country with regard to discharge standards. This impairs pollution control integrated water management in shared watersheds.

National standards established discharge concentration "admissible limits" and "temporary tolerated limits". The former could be surpassed, being subject to payment for the "right to pollute" while the latter could not, being subject to sanctions and fines. The objective was to decrease the "temporary tolerated limits" every two years in order to converge to the admissible limits in a period of ten years. A load limit was also established, in terms of a daily maximum "weighted pollutant load" combining the loads of various polluting substances considered by the regulation. After issuing the Dangerous Wastes National Law No 24051 in 1993, an analogous load limit was added to account for ecotoxic discharges considering a limited number of toxic substances.

Privatization of the water supply and sanitation services is providing the opportunity of establishing water quality discharge standards into the concession contracts and assigning regulatory agencies the duty of monitoring and controlling its compliance.

Water quality standards

There are no national or provincial regulations, which establish water quality standards. In fact Law 24051, which has been adopted by several provinces, established the classification of receiving water bodies in terms of present and future uses and the determination of the discharge standards in the function of water quality objectives and the characteristics of the water body. Since said determination corresponds to the provinces and this law is not applicable in their territories, there has been no progress in that respect. Argentina and Uruguay have agreed to water quality classification in terms of water uses in the downstream reach of the international Uruguay River shared by both countries. A proposal for issuing a water quality classification of streams in the La Plata River Basin agreed upon by all five countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay), is still pending.

A recent amendment of the National Constitution in 1994 entitled the Congress to establish minimum environmental quality standards to be enforceable all over the country, with the provinces or regions having the right to establish more stringent ones, if necessary. The National Secretariat of Natural Resources and Sustainable Development is elaborating on the proposals to be submitted by the national government to the Congress concerning the various issues involved, among which water quality has an outstanding relevance.

Box 3.8 Refining Environmental Policy
(Global Environmental Outlook, 1997)

Command and control systems tend to function more effectively when addressing sector environmental problems. The sector nature of much of the environmental legislation and the short-term success of end-of-pipe solutions when treating site-specific environmental problems have historically reinforced the application of command-and-control mechanisms in isolation. As most countries are now aware, sustainable development and general environmental well-being are complex, integrated problems, requiring cradle-to-grave solutions and public participation. Comprehensive environmental policies that take this into account are therefore gaining favour in many regions. Greater coordination of efforts between national environment-related authorities is also becoming evident world wide.

With command and control policies firmly in place and long experience in their use, a number of regions are exploring alternative and supplementary strategies to augment environmental quality and further protect the health and well being of their citizens. Alternative strategies are projected to be more cost effective than further expansion and reliance on command and control approaches.

Innovative approaches to environmental policy formulation are now evident in North America and Europe, and emerging in Asia and the Pacific and certain countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. In North America, the creation of a better environment for voluntary action has resulted in a multitude of alternative policy responses. Concepts based on common sense, innovation, and flexibility are leading to creative partnerships between government authorities and society. These partnerships in environmental problem solving rely on the use of market incentives and encourage the application of innovative, cost effective, cleaner production technologies and processes.

International recommendations stress the need to create necessary standards and the establishment of appropriate design standards, water quality objectives and discharge consents. Also, the promotion and extension of the application of environmental impact assessments on the basis of geographical information systems and the elaboration at the national and local levels of land-use plans give due consideration to water resources development.

The Second Inter American Dialogue on Water Management describes, in brief, the relevant characteristics that should be given to the regulatory framework and recommends: "To endow the legal systems regulating the use and preservation of water resources with a broad scope, clarity, flexibility, and permanence over the long-term. Likewise, the regulatory system should preferably be formulated in a gradual, harmonious fashion within the framework provided by the basin and should be integrated with regulations from other sectors involved in water resources issues in order to strain the objectives of development, equity, and sustainability".

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