The integration of land use and climate change risks in the Programmes of Measures of River Basin Plans - assessing the influence of the Water Framework Directive in Portugal

Land use or associated practices have impacts on water quality and quantity. Some of these impacts may be aggravated by water-related climate change risks such as floods and droughts. At the river basin level, measures to foster water-wise land uses such as the prevention of soil pollution, soil imperviousness or floods, among others, may strengthen the articulation between land use impacts and water protection. The Water Framework Directive (WFD), framed by the concept of integrated water resources management, challenges the articulation between water processes and uses, and, consequently, between water resources planning and land use planning. To foster this goal, it required the Member States to establish in the River Basin Management Plans (RBMPs) the Programmes of Measures (PoMs). These are critical to disseminate the water-land use nexus message to stakeholders. This article develops a discourse analysis assessing the use of terms associated with land use and water-related climate change risks by the PoMs established in Portugal. The results bring to the fore evidence-based data revealing that integrative approaches, noticeable in the very narrative of measures and on the allocation of responsibilities for their implementation, have not been reinforced after the WFD entered into force. They also show that the PoMs, usually understood as mainly technical planning tools, are strongly permeable to politically embedded institutional contexts. Two major fields of for future research emerge out of this research. One is to further assess if this is localized phenomenon or if it is occurring in other EU countries, and another to understand if the narrative of measures is influencing the very implementation of the PoMs over the EU.