The Scottish Government

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

1.1 The Scottish Parliament has passed national legislation, the Water Environment and Water Services (Scotland) Act 2003, to implement the EC Water Framework Directive ( WFD). The WFD is one of the first European regulations to explicitly demand a high degree of public and stakeholder involvement in its implementation. Accordingly, the Act places the people of Scotland at the heart of managing the water environment and an open participatory process was adopted during the development of the legislation.

1.2 In support of the longer term implementation of this legislation, the Scottish Executive commissioned Ipsos MORI to undertake qualitative research to gather and explore opinions and priorities of the Scottish public in regard to the quality of the water environment, and to explore how the public might be effectively engaged in issues about the water environment, in order to inform policy decisions. Stakeholders' opinions were also elicited, with stakeholders approached as informed members of the public rather than as representatives of a particular organisation. This report presents the findings from this research.

Policy Background

1.3 The WFD was passed by the European Union in 2000. It has two key components. First, it requires us to manage our water environment on the basis of units that make sense in environmental terms - River Basin Districts that include all interdependent rivers, lochs, estuaries, coastal waters and associated underground waters. A plan is to be drawn up for each River Basin District setting out where there are environmental problems and what will be done to tackle them. Second, it requires that all impacts on the water environment, physical, polluting and otherwise, are controlled, with the aim of achieving 'good' ecological status for most water bodies by a specified deadline - 2015 in most cases.

1.4 The WFD differs from previous legislation in a number of ways. Most importantly, it sets out a framework whereby decisions on the water environment should be set in the context of wider ecological issues, while being cognisant of local environmental, economic and social considerations. It has moved from using narrow chemical parameters for measuring water quality to wider ecological parameters, such as the shape of water bodies, volume of water, and impact on wildlife. Crucially, the WFD recognised that in order to ensure successful implementation, effective public participation and consultation was essential.

1.5 The WFD is being implemented in Scotland through the Water Environment and Water Services (Scotland) Act 2003. While the vast majority of Scotland's rivers, lochs, estuaries, coastal waters and groundwaters are of high quality, problems do exist. Moreover, Scotland's water has a wide range of uses and users and carries crucial importance to Scotland's image abroad.

1.6 To inform and support implementation of this legislation, the Scottish Executive has been undertaking a substantial programme of research. Much of this has been scientific and concerned with regulation, but, in 2006, it commissioned a suite of social research projects to gauge public awareness and opinion in relation to the WFD and to the water environment in general. The first two phases of this research, a public attitude survey (Martin, 2006) and a literature review of Scottish and international research (Dalrymple, 2006) were published by the Scottish Executive. The main findings from these are broadly similar:

• the attitude survey found that the public think the Scottish water environment is important, is generally of good quality and is likely to stay that way;
• the literature review concluded that water quality was the most important priority in terms of the water environment.

1.7 The third phase of this research, the findings of which are summarised in this report, was to explore public attitudes in more depth. The focus of this project was to investigate how the general public could be engaged in concerns about the water environment. Qualitative methods were used to elicit the degree of priority people place on an ecologically sound water environment and the choices they would make on the basis of this. To help design and inform this work, interviews were undertaken with informed stakeholders to explore their views as individuals and their expectations for public understanding and involvement.

Research Aims and Objectives

1.8 The overall aim of this project was to elicit the degree of priority people place on an ecologically sound water environment and the choices they would make on the basis of this, in the face of possibly competing environmental, social and economic concerns.

1.9 The key objectives were to explore and assess:

• perceptions of what the water environment means to people;
• the relative values which are placed on different attributes of the water environment, including location;
• whether the views of different groups of people vary in significant ways and what factors influence shared and divergent views;
• the choices people make about how and whether to maintain, improve or pay no attention to particular water environments and the factors that would feature in their decision-making;
• the effectiveness of the methods that have been employed in the research and suggest approaches for ongoing engagement with stakeholders and members of the public throughout implementation of the WFD.

Methodology

1.10 This research project had two phases:

• 10 in-depth interviews with stakeholders; and
• 7 focus groups with the general public.

1.11 The in-depth interviews with stakeholders were conducted between 5 October and 24 October 2006. A list of potential stakeholders, most of whom were members of the National Stakeholders Forum, was identified by the Scottish Executive. Letters from the Ipsos MORI research team were sent to 10 of these and followed up by telephone to make appointments for interviews.

1.12 The stakeholders had already been involved in considerable consultation over the WFD, and continue to be consulted through the National Stakeholder Forum ( NSF). The NSF, which was formed to oversee the introduction of the WFD in Scotland, includes senior representatives from industry, environmental groups, and farming and community interests. The Forum provides advice to Scottish Ministers on any aspect of WFD implementation in Scotland and presents information to key stakeholders on the introduction of the WFD. It has been fully involved in the implementation process. Thus, for the purposes of this project, stakeholders were asked to respond in the interviews as informed members of the public rather than representatives of their organisation. This was to minimise repetition of conversations they may have already had about the implementation of the WFD and to gain a fuller picture of their individual views on priorities for the water environment. It had the further purpose of helping to inform how the focus group work with the public should be carried out, particularly in terms of topic guide development.

1.13 The focus groups were conducted between 7 November and 14 November 2006. Members of the public were recruited by experienced interviewers who were provided with a set of recruitment instructions, including quota details, to aid in the targeting of prospective participants. To ensure maximum attendance at the groups, participants were given £25 to cover expenses.

1.14 The groups were held at various locations across Scotland. The rationale for selecting particular geographical areas was mainly based on providing a balance of urban, small town and rural areas as well as a range of local water environments (coastal, inland with river, inland by a loch). After taking these into consideration, we specifically picked Aviemore because of recent over-development in the area and Scotlandwell because of the well-publicised pollution problems with nearby Loch Leven.

1.15 The segmentation of the groups and details of focus group locations are shown in Table 1 below. It was designed to provide breadth across the different groups but relative homogeneity in terms of age and social class within each group. This was important to ensure that participants felt relaxed and uninhibited.

Table 1: Segmentation and location of groups

1.16 Discussion guides were developed for the interviews and focus groups. Topics covered were broadly similar for the stakeholders and the general public. The topics included:

• current state of the water environment in Scotland
• threats to the water environment
• views on the WFD
• priorities for improvement of the water environment
• public involvement.

1.17 Additionally, a scenarios exercise was used in the focus groups to help identify priorities for the WFD and water environment (see chapter five). The full discussion guides are included in the Appendix.

1.18 With the permission of participants, all discussions were recorded and then transcribed for analysis. XSight (a qualitative analysis software package) was used to organise, code, search and retrieve the text.

Structure of report

1.19 This report presents the findings from the stakeholder interviews and the focus groups with the public. Chapter 2 sets the context by discussing knowledge and understanding of the water environment. Chapter 3 explores people's concerns about the water environment and the various threats to it. Chapter 4 covers views on the WFD. Chapter 5 looks at the priorities for the future of the water environment. Chapter 6 considers views on the best ways to involve the public in implementation of the WFD. Each of these chapters is structured with the stakeholders' views presented first, followed by the public's views. The final chapter summarises the key findings and discusses the main implications for implementation of the WFD.

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