Do Water Management and Climate-Adapted Management of Wetlands Interfere in Practice? Lessons from the Biebrza Valley, Poland

In this chapter the authors deal with the implementation of Water Framework Directive in the catchment of the Biebrza River (north-east Poland) that covers 7,120 km2. Special attention was paid to the context of conservation of riverine and wetland ecosystems facing pressures driven by the climatic change. Measures foreseen by the National Water-Environment Programme for the catchment of Biebrza are analysed in order to reveal whether the actions planned, expressing the implementation of Water Framework Directive, anticipate potential pressures originating from the observed and defined, climate-related pressures such as increasing frequency of summer flooding, ongoing decrease in summer sums of precipitation and increasing frequencies of extremely high summer rainfalls. The DPSIR feedback loops presenting selected relations between the climate-related pressures and potential negative responses of geoecosystems of the Biebrza catchment are described in order to verify whether the measures implemented aimed at conservation and improvement of the state of water bodies and water-dependent ecosystems are capable for assuring their good status. Basing upon the observations and facts analysed, the authors derive lessons learnt from the process of Water Framework Directive implementation, showing that the improvement of allocation of funds to the water management actions is needed in order to assure good ecological status of aquatic and wetland ecosystems, concerning qualitative and quantitative elements of the water-related environments, facing direct and indirect climate-related pressures.