Governance Networks and Environmental Water Policy Integration. A Study of Norway’s Implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive

Implementing the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), the new water governance in Norway is based upon an ecosystem-principle, making the river basin the basis for coordination of sector policies. Hence, a parallel organization structure to the traditional sector-based structure is introduced. The paper focuses on the challenges of handling the mismatch between organizational structure and problem structure, by introducing parallel coordination structures to ensure spatial fit. More specifically, the paper discusses how this new water governance system, mainly based on network coordination, affects the integration of the environmental aims of the WFD within different sector authorities and local authorities in Norway. The sector authorities and local authorities shall themselves decide how their sector or local community within a given water region best can comply with the WFD environmental aims. This institutional arrangement allows for local differentiation and flexibility, but this requires integration of the environmental WFD aims. How, then, does the institutional characteristics of the different authorities influence how and to what degree they integrate the aims of the WFD into their policy goals, practices and measures? We discuss this research question by analyzing time-series data from national surveys to the members of the regional networks (River Basin District Boards) from 2013, 2015 and 2019 – allowing us to illuminated changes of experiences and attitudes over time. These Board-members represent municipalities, counties or national authorities. The tension between integration on the one hand and flexibility and local differentiation on the other affects the implementation of the WFD all over Europe. This paper contributes with knowledge on how institutional arrangements handle this tension, more precisely Norway experiences with addressing this tension through governance networks. The paper analyses the preconditions for and results of this institutional arrangement by studying how the environmental policy integration varies across water regions (complexity), public authorities (their institutional characteristics – as being part of state or local government, having single or multi-purpose responsibility) and time.