THE CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND FOR THE ANALYSIS OF THE WATER FRAMEWORK DIRECTIVE Sample Clauses

THE CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND FOR THE ANALYSIS OF THE WATER FRAMEWORK DIRECTIVE. ‌ The discussion and approval of the WFD, specially its economic and participatory governance approach, coincided with a growing debate about, and advocacy for, a paradigm shift in water management. As Xxxx-Xxxxx et al. (2011) and Xxx Xxxxx et al. (2014) argue, we are undergoing a paradigm shift in the way we understand, define and approach natural resources management, and, consequently, water management. This new approach results from a reorientation in objectives, methodologies, evaluation criteria, agents involved and institutional frameworks that has evolved since the 1990s. The shift is the expression, in the field of water resources management, of a transformation in the way we understand the relationship between society and nature, reflecting changes in other realms of our socioeconomic environment: the 'neoliberal globalization' and changes in the logics and mechanisms of capital reproduction and accumulation. The implications of these changes for natural resources management, and for the field of water resources in particular, have been systematically analyzed in recent literature (Xxxxxxxxx-Xxxx and Xxx Xxxxx, 2015: March, 2013; Xxxxxxx, 2013; Xxxxxxxxxx, 2013; Xxxxxxx, 2010; Castree, 2010; Castree, 2008a and 2008b; Xxxxxx et al., 2007; Xxxxxxxxx, 2007; Xxxxxx, 2005; Xxxxxx, 2002). Following authors such as Xxxxxxxxx and Xxxxxx (1993) and Giampietro et al. (2006), among others, we can argue that the new approach to natural resources management results from a need to acknowledge "the unavoidable existence of non-equivalent perceptions and representations of reality; contrasting but legitimate perspectives found among social actors; and heavy levels of uncertainty." Aquatic ecosystems are complex, non-linear systems, with emergent properties and unpredictable responses to interventions. They are intertwined with social subsystems, which make them reflexive. This hybrid nature of water (“at once real, like nature, narrated like discourse, and collective, like society” (Xxxxxx, 1993, p.6)) results in the increasingly frequent use of the term waterscapes to refer to socio-hydrological ecosystems. The term aims to more deeply explore the concept of socio-ecological systems, emphasizing the complexity of the ecological, cultural and institutional processes that are intertwined in discourses and understandings of water. In this sense, and following Swyngedouw (1999 and 2007), Budds and Xxxxxxxx (2012) use the term waterscapes to speak of material and en...