Habitat banking in Swedish rivers and water bodies: A concept paper on implementing the EU Water Framework Directive

The European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive entails extensive environmental improvement goals for lakes and rivers throughout the Union. Realising these goals in countries such as Sweden, which has tens of thousands of water bodies, many of which are used for commercial activities such as hydropower, presents a considerable challenge for policy. In this paper, habitat banking – where environmental improvements in one location are used to offset measures that reduce environmental quality elsewhere – is discussed as a potential way forward. The conclusion is that although this would likely be limited to banking within individual river systems rather than across the entire country, it would nonetheless be an interesting option to consider. Although habitat banking is more complex in aquatic than in terrestrial systems, because of the migratory nature of many of the keystone species improvements in the downstream parts of a river system can potentially generate enough environmental benefits to offset the impacts of measures further upstream.Godkänd; 2013; 20160304 (jessta)Vatten som ekonomisk resurs, Framtagande av relevant och användaranpassad samhällsekonomisk modell för miljöåtgärder för kraft och liv i vatten (FRAM-KLIV