Measuring the Sustainability of Water Plans in Inter-Regional Spanish River Basins

• Main Authors: María M. Borrego-Marín, Laura Riesgo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2016-08-01
• Series: Water
• Subjects: sustainability; Water Framework Directive; integral water management; multicriteria decision analysis; water policy design
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/8/8/342

This paper analyses and compares the sustainability of the water plans in the Spanish River basins according to the objectives of the Water Framework Directive. Even though the concept of sustainability has been traditionally associated with the triple bottom line framework, composed of economic, environmental, and social dimensions, in this paper sustainability has been enlarged by including governance aspects. Two multicriteria decision analysis approaches are proposed to aggregate the sustainability dimensions. Results show that the environmental dimension plays the most important role in the whole sustainability (40%) of water basins, followed by both economic and social criteria (25%). By contrast, the dimension of governance is the least important for sustainability (11%). A classification of the Spanish basins according to their sustainability indicates that the water agency with the highest sustainability is Western Cantabrian, followed by Eastern Cantabrian and Tagus. By contrast, Minho-Sil, Jucar, and Douro are the least sustainable.