Integrated Water Resources Management as a Compromise: Renewing the Water Act in the Canton of Fribourg, Switzerland

International audienceInternationally promoted for decades, integrated water resources management (IWRM) has been considered as an imperative for sustainable water use by Swiss federal authorities since the early 2000s. However, its operationalization leads us to question the gap vis-à-vis the theoretical model. The analysis of the renewal process of the Water Act in the Canton of Fribourg shows that integrated management has to be considered as a regionalised institutional compromise: first, the scope of sectoral integration is not given; secondly, the scale finally adopted does not fit exactly the watershed, even though it is presented as the perfect functional space for regulating water use. Thanks to a historical and comprehensive approach, we strive to overpass “naturalised” and “functionalist” visions of water resources management