Open access publications in the SLU publication database

Abstract

Sweden has recently presented a new system of Environmental Quality Criteria
(EQC) that are expected to support a flexible, goal-oriented approach to
environmental management. The EQC of surface water may serve as the basis
for implementing the European Union's Water Framework Directive (WFD) in
Sweden. Useful as EQC can be for establishing management priorities and
monitoring changes over time, though, there is a long-standing concern that the
simplifications inherent in assessment systems such as EQC compromise their
value. One manifestation of this concern was the two decades of active debate
before the official adoption by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency in
1990. Understanding the concerns which led to this delay may provide useful
insights into the challenges of implementing EQC and even the WFD. The aim
of this thesis is to improve the understanding of EQC and their implementation
by examining the EQC from both scientific and management perspectives. This
is done by first presenting a case study of how the new surface water EQC are
applied in river basin, and then through a historical study of the decades leading
up to the official adoption of the first surface water EQC. The historical study
found that it was not so much a definitive resolution of any scientific problems,
but rather developments in management strategies, together with a change in the
nature of the environmental problems facing Sweden, that were of most importance
for EQC finally being not only sanctioned, but touted in 1999 as a key feature
of future environmental management in Sweden. The river basin case study
found that EQC could make a valuable contribution to environmental assessment,
particularly by bringing a broader spectrum of managers, stakeholders and
politicians into contact with environmental data and a coherent overview of the
situation in a region. The value of that contribution, however, is contingent upon
an expert review of the results that identifies potential problems in the specific
EQC application where greater expertise is required for a satisfactory assessment.