Conduct ESE Interpretive Analyses

Subtask Description: Conduct ESE Interpretive Analyses
Scope of Social Component model: results, limits, relevance to sustainable development, role of stakeholders and governance.

Action points of the implementation:
Each of the ESE component models needs to be fully checked to ensure that it represents the part of the system that it is designed to represent. A series of runs will be carried out on each of the component models to identify any problems prior to their inclusion in the full simulation model. These analyses and descriptions interpret the simulation results of the SC model and its objectives.

Result: Documentation showing the interpretive analysis of the social component model.

Area:
Pertuis Charentais , France

Policy Issue:
Freshwater allocation in the Charente river catchment.

Human Activities:
Water management, recreation and tourism, urban and harbour development, agriculture and shellfish farming.

General Information:
The river is a strategic resource for the whole region. Due to agriculture diffuse pollution and water shortage recurrent events during summer. 52% of the water bodies of the Charente basin show a risk of failing the WFD objectives in 2015. The management of the river and its coastal zone implies to take into account the management of agricultural activities and of water supply in the river basin. The main stakeholder concerns (most of them policy makers) are connected to the sustainable management of the water resources and the achievement of the good ecological status. The policy options are considering the modification of the “authorised volumes of water” for each consumptive uses (drinking water for households, irrigation for agriculture) and the improvement of the limitation rules which apply to the consumptive uses during the periods of water shortage

Example of Implementation:
The regional plan for water management dedicated to the Charente river addresses the issue of freshwater quantitative management according to the following objectives:

- The hierarchy of the freshwater uses: 1) good ecological status of the coastal ecosystems, 2) drinking water for households and 3) other uses: agriculture, shellfish farming...

- Reachable Discharge Thresholds (RDT) at different control points on the river. RDT are supposed to be sufficient to ensure the first two uses; the general objective of this management plan will be to make sure that the system is able to reach the RDT during the summer in at least 8 out of every 10 years.

The objective of the social component is to simulate the governance of freshwater quantitative management. The governance module incorporates the rules in use with regards to access rights to water and their restriction during the summer crisis. The freshwater management system consists of two main components: the first is the regular management system, designed to ensure the supply of drinking water and the protection of ecosystems, and the second is the crisis management system during summer freshwater shortage that consists of additional restrictions on the annual volumes available.

Scenarios define in each hydrological unit the level of the maximum annual volume VTW of freshwater for irrigation, its distribution between the different production systems and the value of the parameters α t, β t and μ t .

The regulation module of the model helps to determine how far the current system is from the water management objectives. This is done by estimating the number of days in a simulation when the water level reaches alert or critical levels at monitoring outlets. In a second step, the model simulates the restrictions on authorized water volumes for irrigation. The application of restrictions constrains the irrigation process and results in productivity losses for agriculture. These productivity losses will be considered as damage costs within the framework of the integrated economic assessment.

Comments:
Scope and Limitations of the implementation: For the first SAF applications, we are necessarily limiting the scope of the social assessments (see discussion above on “scaling” in Introduction under Implementation). The example of social assessment chosen for simulation analysis must be limited to the virtual system and treat one or more of its scenarios. This is partially pre-determined in the expression of the scenarios.

Contact: Rémi Mongruel remi.mongruel@ifremer.fr