Mapping Public Participation in the Water Framework Directive: A case study of the Pinios

The EU Water Framework Directive requires the involvement and participation of stakeholders and the public for enhancing the sustainability of water resource management. The Directive is non prescriptive as to how public participation in water management should be operationalised in practice, and this creates a wider role for research that can inform this process. This study explores the issue of public participation, in the context of the Pinios River Basin in Greece, using Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping, a form of qualitative modeling directly related to stakeholders’ perceptions. Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping has been used to elicit stakeholder and public perceptions on the current state and pressures on water resources, the acceptability of achieving full cost recovery for water services, and to explore the potential effects of different water management policy options on water resources of the area. The study offers a perspective on the potential contribution of Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping in involving stakeholders and the public in water resource management. The main advantages of the method include the ease in capturing both local and expert knowledge, the ability to elicit and compare the perceptions of different stakeholder groups, and the ability to unify the respondents ’ viewpoints and understanding of a system without demanding their direct interaction