The feasibility of a river basin management approach to the sustainable development of watercourses.

Anno 1991 river basin management or catchment planning is a way of dealing with water related problems which is being implemented by an increasing number of authorities. Its central tenet is that the river together with adjacent areas belonging to its catchment, should be viewed as a discrete unit for the purpose of planning and implementation of policy goals. Rivers, watercourses and their basins should be managed on the basis of the concept of sustainable development. The river basin management approach, using integrated river basin management techniques, can be a feasible instrument to reach this goal. Integrated river basin management is rare, as there are many key conditions which have to be fulfilled in order to be able to manage a river basin in an integrated way. Within the river basin management approach an institutional and a functional approach can be distinguished. The first is directed at the creation of institutions, for instance an organization with tasks and powers in the field of the promotion of research and/or of monitoring. The second is directed at certain activities, like planning. In the planning of river basins ecological and environmental protection should be given equal attention as economic development. Every considerable activity in a river basin which could attract substantial irreversible environmental impacts should be reviewed by a water-related EIS or a water system impact statement. In case of water projects not only the ecological environment but more generally the effects on the health, safety and living conditions of the local population have to be taken into account. Prediction and assessment of impacts on the water environment and the adjacent land should be systematically developed, starting from the land-use / water quality relationship. Modern integrated planning will gather a lot of material on ecological parameters. This can be used as the basic material for a basin-wide water-related monitoring system. Monitoring networks in river basins can be used for: early warning of acute dangers downstream and for early warning of gradual ecological deterioration.