A project of the Interreg Estonian-Latvian programme “Water bodies without borders” (WBWB).
The overall aim of the project was to support sustainable and economically efficient water use for the Estonian-Latvian trans-boundary river basins Gauja/Koiva and Salaca/Salatsi, improving cooperation between the countries on water issues. To support this, based on information and knowledge exchange activities, revised water body status assessments, economic analysis and public consultations, the joint monitoring programme, assessment of pressures and the action plan of measures was developed for the trans-boundary river basins, as well as knowledge and good practice exchange and training activities were implemented for municipal and measures’ implementing authorities situated in the common water bodies of these river basins.
Project number: Est-Lat 66.
Funded by: European Regional Development Fund; co-funded by the project’s partners.
Project implementation time: 03.2018-02.2020.
Project website: https://wbwb.eu/.
The main tasks and responsibilities of AKTiiVS as a partner in the project were leading and coordinating the joint Estonian-Latvian work and conducting the analysis for Latvia for the economic analysis activities, as well as contribution into the activities on exchange of knowledge and dissemination of the results in relation to the economic analysis.
The economic analysis aimed to provide socioeconomic information and assessments relevant for planning and decision making on effective measures for the joint action plan. It included:
- Joint analysis of water use and users, providing quantitative and water-body scale socioeconomic data with the aim to be used for the next steps of the economic analysis to assess costs of the water use and socioeconomic impacts of measures.
- Joint assessment of the costs caused by water use and their recovery, where joint assessment approach was agreed and the assessments elaborated for all significant water uses, as well as the necessary policy actions were proposed to improve the recovery of these costs according to the “polluter-pays-principle”.
- Economic evaluation of the additional measures for achieving environmental targets, which included assessment of costs of the measures, their cost-effectiveness, analysis of other socioeconomic impacts of the measures. The additional measures were evaluated for such significant pressures as the dams used by small HPPs and other obstacles on rivers, creating hydro-morphological pressures; diffuse nutrient pollution from agricultural activities; measures for lakes with accumulated nutrient pollution. The results were used to provide recommendations on the most socioeconomically effective sets of supplementary measures for the action plan.
For the results of the WBWB project see the project’s website https://wbwb.eu/results/.
Relevant references:Pakalniete K., Krūmiņa A., Simo M. (2020) Economic analysis to support setting effective measures for reaching environmental targets of water bodies. A Technical Report of the project „Water bodies without borders” (EstLat 66). Available (in English) here.