Beneficios y costes ambientales en la Directiva Marco del Agua: conceptos y estimación1

Abstract

Environmental costs and benefits play a major role in the economic analysis prescribed by the Water Framework Directive for the achievement of a sustainable management of water resources. The definition of these concepts is not explicit in the text of the Directive, while there is an urgent need to apply then for analysing whether the implementation of the WFD is disproportionately costly. This paper tries to contribute to the reflexion on the concepts of environmental costs and benefits in the context of the WFD. We discuss the different interpretations and valuations that have been made up to date in Europe and some of the key issues for their estimation.