Cooperations in Water Protection Areas
Katja Beck
Social Sciences in Agriculture, Rural Sociology
Challenges
Farmers and water suppliers have an important role with their co-operations in protecting drinking water and reducing nitrate values in many federal states in Germany. This co-operation model, where many different actors are involved, is a win-win situation for all participants and a possible solution for the complex problem of nitrate in drinking water: By using less fertilizer, farmers protect the environment. In addition, they get compensations for potential profit cuts. The water suppliers in turn need to put less effort in water treatment and can use those financial savings for compensations.
Generally, those voluntary cooperations in water protection areas are seen as a successful way also on European level, which are even better than political instruments (Heinz 2004). One reason for this is that farmers do not want to agree on long-termed commitments. Advantages of those cooperations are that site-specific circumstances can be taken into account (Heinz 2004) and there is a high cost-efficiency, the cooperations are performance-orientated and they are highly accepted of farmers. Per definition are cooperations voluntarily (Doluschitz 2000).
However, several political circumstances have changed. Until now, it is not clear how political regulations will be affected. Furthermore, water suppliers are dependent on collaboration with farmers. This cooperation is the only (sustainable) option to decrease nitrate values in ground water (water suppliers 2017). There is no information and no data about water suppliers and generally spoken no data/no research on this field since 2008.
Objectives
- Evaluate how current political changes affect cooperations in water protection areas between farmers and water suppliers
- Analyse if voluntariness is a suitable instrument for water protection
- Work out the main challenges and success factors of cooperations in water protection areas from the view of the water suppliers
Expected results
- Political regulations are too weak. Stricter laws and punishments are demanded.
- Transparency at all levels is unalterable. Information flows between all stakeholders involved (water suppliers, advisors, farmers). Transparency in decision-making bodies.
- Voluntariness of cooperations is a big challenge. There is no possibility to force all farmers. “Black sheep“ are visible, free-rider effects.
- Controls are insufficient. There is no or only soft punishment after contempt (e.g. no compliance of respites)
- Cooperationsare seen as only measurement for better nitrate values. Water suppliers are convinced of the instrument cooperations, until now it seems there is no alternative.
Methods
- Step: Analysis of current changes in political programs. Compare those regulations with older versions à work out changes over the years. Comparative analysis
- Step: Qualitative data. Research design: cross-sectional study of main parts in Germany. Sampling: Limited to Germany, connection between current situation and political changes. Instrumental-use multiple-case sampling (Patton 2015): select multiple cases for generating generalizable findings that can be used to inform changes in e.g. policies. Data collection: open-ended questionnaires, “expert interviews“ (technicalengineers/responsible persons for water protection. Data collection via telephone: better range and convenient. Data analysis: qualitative, summarising content analysis, designing categories with examples.
References
Heinz, Ingo (2004): KooperationenzwischenWasserversorgungsunternehmen und Landwirten - Eine EU-weite Analyse. In: GWF WasserAbwasser145 (4), S. 263–267.
Publications
Beck, K. and Knierim A, 2019. The Role of Cooperations in Water Protection from the Water Suppliers’ Perspective, German Journal of Agricultural Economics