Cross-sectoral policy integration at the forest and water nexus: National level instrument choices and integration drivers in the European Union

This article provides a comparative study of policy integration between the forest and water sectors across EU Member States and explores the main ecological, policy and socio-economic drivers behind integration choices. Policy integration is defined by the range of instruments among which countries can choose to integrate these two natural resource sectors and these are categorized in regulatory, organizational, financial and informational instruments. We conducted a survey to gather data and used Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to explore the drivers of policy integration. With QCA we observe which combinations of drivers relate to certain instrument choices. Overall, we see that the positive expected outcomes of water and forest interactions are already being exploited by some countries. The most often observed policy integration is implemented along regulatory and informational instruments. We found contexts with high water quality, forest and water sectoral strength and with allocation of rural development funds for ecosystem services, to be conductive to policy integration. Government expenditure on environmental protection relates mostly to informational instruments which concerns research and monitoring activities. The article concludes that policy integration at the forest and water nexus is still an incomplete policy process across EU Member States, but the current policy developments are promising for proponents of integration and can lead to a stronger nexus in the future.