Wetlands and Water Framework Directive: Protection, Management and Climate Change - Wetlands and Water Framework Directive: Protection, Management and Climate Change - page 3

approximately 80 % of these cases. Among the greatest challenges wetlands faced
so far and are up to be exposed to in the near future, the drainage and declining
water levels are considered as the most critical ones. As revealed, projected climatic
changes expressed as increasing temporal and quantitative variability of extreme
meteorological events are expected to signi

cantly in fl uence agriculture and for-

estry by challenging field works, species development and harvesting of crops

gained from wetlands (Grygoruk et al. 2014 ). Changing environmental conditions
of wetlands are projected either to require in-depth adaptation of existing man-
agement or to develop new approaches. It is likely that changing frequencies of
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floods and droughts, observed trends in snow accumulation and variability in the
occurrence of seasons will primarily affect economic development, which will
require actions to be undertaken in order to prevent negative in uences of these

changes to stakeholders. Then, the pressures oriented at water management, in
Central Europe in principal oriented at mitigation of frequent

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fl floods, may result

(and already do) in degradation of aquatic ecosystems (Biere noj-Bazille and

Grygoruk 2013 ; Dembek 2015 ; Mioduszewski and Okruszko 2012 ). Pressures
originating from agriculture on revitalization of land reclamation systems and
training rivers in order to assure the continuous retrieval and transfer of water
downstream have already induced con

ż

icts between the need of implementation of
WFD and social requirements (Dembek 2015 ). Although in national context it
seems the win-win situations are achieved and contemporary measures undertaken
at river management level (dredging, ditch revitalization) ful

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l all the requirements
of WFD, HD, BD and environmental impact assessments (EIA), the deeper detailed
insights into such activities revealed that to meet the good ecological status of rivers
and water bodies appears — sadly — the last thing to be achieved by 2015 (Bi-

ere ski et al. 2015 ).

Examples from Poland and Germany presented in this topic allow to foresee
coming bene

ż noj-Bazille and Grygoruk 2013 ; Stru ż y ń

ts for the environment originating from WFD implementation.
However, the same examples allow to suspect that the future of WFD implemen-
tation without providing appropriate funding background, either by adjustment of
national governmental mechanisms or EU-scale programmes aimed at subsidizing
the implementing bodies, does not appear bright (Grygoruk and Okruszko 2015 ). In
the current perspective and facing actions undertaken so far expressing WFD
implementation, it is likely that on top of the biotic and hydrochemical aspects of
water bodies, the hydromorphology and quantitative indicators of river status are
ones whose connection to status of wetlands will be the strongest. Regardless of
hydrological types of wetlands, from mires, through

floodplains to estuaries, one
should assure consideration of wetlands as inherent elements of river continua and
include them in a catchment-scale environmental management.

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