Water restrictions and water rationing

Stakeholder participation of various actors is needed to facilitate the adoption and implementation of water restriction and water rationing measures. The most important sectors affected are domestic water supply, agriculture, industry, and tourism with stakeholders being individuals, organizations, institutions, decision-makers, or policymakers, who determine or are affected by these measures. Besides the possibilities for direct control and enforcement by public authorities, stakeholder involvement is crucial for broad and proper implementation and fine tuning of such measures to obtain the highest possible effectiveness. 

Water restriction and water rationing measures are often implemented as part of drought management plans or strategies. It is important to foster active participation of all relevant stakeholders during the elaboration of these plans to obtain different stakeholder opinions and mitigate conflicts between interested parties prior to the decision-making process. A purposeful description of legitimate stakeholders, including their interests, values and approaches to risk is a pre-requisite for the development of such plans and strategies and for ensuring an understanding of their link with institutional drought policy. Local stakeholders have the best knowledge of the different water use sectors and components of the hydrological cycle and can ensure that targets are coherent and are implemented where the socio-economic costs are the lowest. Active participation contributes to achieving the optimum sustainable equilibrium, considering social, economic, and environmental aspects and facilitating the continuation, in the long-term, of the decision making by consensus. 

An example of a potential source of conflict is the distribution of water resources between the drinking water sector and the agricultural sector during drought situations. Priority is usually given to the drinking water sector satisfying 100% of the needs, while quantities allocated to agricultural irrigation depend on the remaining water availability and rarely match the needs. To increase the acceptance of the prioritization of water uses during droughts as set by drought management plans and strategies it is important to bring stakeholders from the drinking water and agricultural sector together and allow for discussions on how to set priorities and balance different interests. 

Water restrictions and rationing are very efficient measures to reduce water demand during water scarcity and emergency drought situations. They can be implemented very quickly and have a fast effect on reducing water demand. In some cases, they are even effective in the long term, when restrictions are not imposed anymore due to learning effects. However, both measures should not intentionally be implemented to alleviate water scarcity problems in the long term. An important success factor in general is the conscious involvement of stakeholders and of the general public and the legal power to enact the water restrictions on the society. 

A limiting factor is that the measures are only effective if compliance is controlled which may lead to high monitoring costs. Besides, creating the necessary drought management plans, procedures and laws is a very time consuming process associated with administrative costs. 

Compulsory water restrictions can produce significant water savings in a short time, comparable only to significant price increases. Restrictions are usually favoured over economic instruments in temporary situations with critically limited water supplies. However, such measures are associated with a reduction of socioeconomic wellbeing and significant cuts of government revenue streams which may be needed to implement system efficiency measures. Water restrictions impose inconvenience costs, allocative efficiency costs as well as significant enforcement costs. 

Other measures such as detailed drought management plans and the introduction of a reliable drought early warning system allowing for a more cautious use of the remaining water resources are relevant from an economic perspective as they can help to reduce the risk of imposing severe water restrictions or rationing measures. 

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) can orient competent administrations towards water saving in general. Art 9 (water pricing) of the WFD can be implemented in combination with water restrictions. Drought Management plans, which can also be subject to the WFD Program of Measures normally include restrictions and methods for rationing in the case of drought events. The practice to restrict water use in times of water scarcity or drought is included in many Member States' water allocation policies and in some Member States, restrictions are determined according to a hierarchy of water users. Abstraction rules are sometimes more stringent in areas suffering from chronic water shortage. A new EU regulation on minimum requirements for water reuse for agricultural irrigation has been released in 2020 (regulation (EU) 2020/741). Reused water is a relevant resource during times of water scarcity. 

Water restriction and rationing measures can be implemented very quickly during water scarcity and drought situations (within a few days to weeks). Clear procedures, for instance defined in a drought management plan, can speed up the implementation of these measures. The agreement on such procedures may, however, be a more time-consuming process as it should involve all relevant stakeholders, and they may have conflicting interests, for example on the prioritisation of water supply to various sectors. 

The lifetime of water restrictions and rationing measures is usually less than 1 year since they are applied as emergency measures during water scarcity and drought situations. The efficiency of these measures should continuously be evaluated and procedures implementing these measures adjusted accordingly. In case of persistent water scarcity, other measures should be preferred that are implemented and maintained long term.