Wetlands and Water Framework Directive: Protection, Management and Climate Change - Wetlands and Water Framework Directive: Protection, Management and Climate Change - page 5

management measures in order to keep the use of wetlands in an environmental
sustainable, yet pro table manner, is to build their capacity towards consideration

of climatic change as a local-scale issue. Numerous scienti

c and management
projects implemented throughout the Europe, such as the HABIT-CHANGE pro-
ject, attempted to enhance stakeholder dialogue between the environmental man-
agement institutions and particular groups of people, whose actions determine the
use and status of valuable ecosystems. Changing of stakeholder s attitudes was

done either by broadening their knowledge on climate-related impacts on habitats
and management or by inducing their emotions stating that the climatic change is
unavoidable and the lack of adaptation will result in further deterioration of eco-
systems, wetlands especially, and reduction of

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income from activities done

regardless of the variable impacts of climate.
However, the majority of national-level adaptation strategies lack connection to
local actions (Rannow et al. 2014 ) and hence the management of valuable wetlands
requires stronger insights coming from international climate-adaptation policy
towards the single plots located on valuable wetlands.

1.5 Yesterday s Lessons and Tomorrow s Perspectives

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Facing considerable abundance of regulations (that have been attempted to be)
implemented in the geographical, societal, environmental and economic perspec-
tives of Europe in the last 20 years, it seems that European union does not require
any new directives concerning the interface of wetlands, water management and
climatic change to be developed. Moreover, observing steadily increasing aware-
ness of stakeholders regarding requirements and costs of implementation of existing
environmental regulations, we doubt that any new regulations inducing obstacles
for users of water and goods that origin from the natural wetland environment can
be socially accepted and then developed and implemented in the near future. On the
other hand, it is widely agreed in groups of practitioners and scientists from Europe
that existing regulations, such as the WFD, HD and BD, contain suf ciently good

regulations that, once ef ciently implemented, may prevent degradation of wetlands

and water bodies, assure sustainable water management in social and economic
context as well as allow to mitigate climate-related primary and secondary pressures
to ecosystems and catchments (Janauer et al. 2015 ). We hope the lessons presented
in this topic will allow readers to conclude which

fields of management of wetlands
facing their status in WFD and concerning prospective pressures originating in the
changing climate require special attention. We also hope that the enhancement of
ef ciency in implementation of the existing environmental regulations in EU in the

near future will assure good status of waters and wetlands as properly managed
ecosystems, resilient to impacts originating from human pressures and climatic
change.