r land use planning and water management. With the WFD –
a new situation for local water management has arisen and in
order to realize institutional arrangements based on hydrological
boundaries, inter-municipal cooperation is required. Thus, the
municipalities have a key role in water management, however
the requirements from the WFD imply new challenges to adapt
their land use planning and water management. In the Kävlinge
and Rönne catchments, some of the municipalities were involved
in both catchments illustrating the need to collaborate in several
different catchments and constellations with different priorities
and water problems. This includes heterogeneities in the water
landscape such as upstream–downstream aspects on water quality
problems. The Water Framework Directive does not allow degradation
of any waters, making prioritizing between different and
may be connected problems even more difficult. In Kävlinge River
Catchment inter-municipal agreement for actual mitigation activities
were formalized in the Kävlinge River Project before the WFD
was initiated, while in Rönne catchment, the collaboration before
was focused on monitoring, providing different legacies for the
adaptation to the WFD. The idea of water councils as a platform
for different stakeholders to promote information exchange and
integrated water management across sectors may be sufficient for
fulfilling the requirements from the WFD on stakeholder involvement
in terms of information and consultation. However, local
water councils as anode for active participationinterms of practical
mitigation measures that needs to be undertaken by local stakeholders
such as farmers, call for an adapted institutional arrangement.
In the case study we found four factors to be important: Firstly, the
scope of the water council needs to be combined with an organization
and commitment from stakeholders that provide sufficient
resources to actually perform the activities planned to achieve the
goals. In this case, securing enough funding and practical information
and assistance was important. Secondly, in Kävlinge, as
a response to new challenges, an adaptation of the institutional
arrangements was made indicating willingness for flexibility and
awareness of the need to include the most relevant stakeholders.
As pointed out by Reed (2008) it is not enough to simply
provide stakeholders withthe opportunity toparticipate,theymust
actually be able to do it. Thirdly, a clear leadership to drive the
process is important to realize the specific goals and assess the
outcome. Fourthly, in the Kävlinge case, the final decision on actually
taking part in the project was voluntary for the farmers. This
allows for possibilities to take local conditions and experiences into
consideration.