Environmental Engineering Reference
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pressures, water management authorities should foresee actions oriented at restora-
tion of formerly degraded wetlands and rivers, providing appropriate funding. So far,
in the perspective of environmental policy implementation and at the interface of
environmental conservation and management of valuable ecosystems, we conclude
that the regulations resulting mostly from theWFD, HD and BD are not interrelated in
their implementation, which causes vast selectivity in implementations of measures
and thus
results only in the partially positive responses of the managed wetlands
and aquatic ecosystems.
4.6 Lessons Learnt and Implications for the Management
1. Contemporary environmental management programmes resulting from Water
Framework Directive as well as from the Natura 2000 regulations, either do not
anticipate climatic change at all (Water-Environment programme for the Biebrza
Catchment) or consider this phenomenon to the very limited extent (Natura 2000
management plans). Although regulations seem to be strict and comprehensive
enough in order to assure the adaptation to the prospective climatic change, both
implemented so far and planned actions do not re
ect anticipation of the impacts
of changing climate neither to ecosystems nor to society and local economy.
2. Climatic change and related actions, although normally being considered in the
scale of continents and countries, should be presented to local societies as
challenges of the local scale in order to assure public acceptance of mitigation
and adaptation measures.
3. No interlinks between the water management plans and Natura 2000 protection
plans were observed in the region analyzed, especially in terms of climate-
related adaptive management and river continuity (
fl
(fish passes). Although some
actions were undertaken in order to assure restoration of formerly drained
wetlands and to restore the continuity of rivers to biota, this type of actions is in
general neglected in regional water management policy,
requiring to be
improved.
4. Reactions of water management authorities to
fl
floods and conditions of high
water levels are much quicker and in
uential to the environment than the ones
oriented towards the droughts. So far no response form water management
authorities occurred in the catchment of the river Biebrza in order to mitigate the
negative effects of droughts, for both society and ecosystems. This should be
considered as a
fl
flaw of the WFD implementation which should anticipate
droughts as an important threat for water resources in the environmental (e.g.
environmental
fl
flows) and socio-economic context (e.g. water supply to agri-
culture and aquaculture, drinking water supply).
5. The majority of threats to rivers in wetland landscapes originate from the EU-
subsidized intensi
fl
cation of grassland farming. It is observed that the degradation
of rivers results from social pressures of farmers and land users receiving pay-
ments for the so-called sustainable use of wetlands. One can expect that in order to
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