Allocation of Costs and Benefits in the Water Framework Directive: A Dutch Exploration - Water and Agriculture: Sustainability, Markets and Policies - page 41

The economic analysis is an important part of the process to identify realistic goals
and find the appropriate measures. If we want the economic analysis to take account of
the relationship between agriculture and nature management it is important to decide in
advance what assumptions and principles are selected within the analysis. It will be
possible to distribute the costs within the programmes of measures eventually selected as
the most cost-effective. The Social Cost Benefit Analysis (SCBA) can be used to clarify
the benefits that will be derived from achieving the objectives, where environmental
objectives should be included. In order to strike the best possible balance between the
various interests in rural areas, such as nature management and agriculture, it is important
to realise that the principles referred to in the Cost Effective Analysis (CEA) and the
SCBA will have impact on the results. Decisions made now will influence the degrees of
freedom for decisions further in the implementation trajectory. The decision whether or
not the monetary value of nature is included in the analysis, for instance, determines the
distribution of costs and benefits of measures. This influences the decision whether a
measure is disproportionate or not. The final decision whether costs and benefits are
disproportional is not an economic question but a political one.
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