Collaborative Water Governance in the European Union: A Comparison between Two Member States

Both global and European policies encourage collaborative governance to achieve sustainable use of natural resources.

Due to its cross-cutting nature, water governance is a prime example of intersectionality for multiple sectors, actors, disciplines and scales related to sustainability.

However, there are various approaches and institutional settings for water governance which impact upon the implementation process.

The proposed project studies this context through a novel and interdisciplinary research approach that combines my political science background with engineering and natural resources management expertise.

The research has three research objectives: 1) discover how EU water-related policies encourage cross-sectoral collaborative governance and what institutional approaches Finland and Sweden have in their implementation; 2) examine the forms of knowledge Finland and Sweden use in cross-sectoral collaborative processes aiming to reach EU policy goals; and 3) bring understanding on how collaboration and use of knowledge can be designed to help attain EU water policy goals and to promote sustainable use of natural resources.

Out of the 24-months research and training, 16 will be at the Water and Environmental Engineering Research Group (WAT) at Aalto University, and 8 at the Department of Political Science, Umeå University.

This division of time ensures an interdisciplinary research environment with strong expertise in cross-sectoral, nexus and governance research.