The Water Framework Directive institutionalises participatory processes in river basin planning across the European Union. This paper reports on three case studies from southern Europe where conflicts over water exist. In each a different method for participation was experimentally employed: scenario workshops, mediated modelling, and social multicriteria evaluation. Scenario workshops and mediated modelling proved well suited to the early stages of a planning process (problem solving and identification of goals and alternatives) and to be good at educating participants and supporting capacity building. Their performance was less satisfactory with respect to resolving long-standing conflicts and achieving consensus. In comparison, social multicriteria evaluation was better able to address the evaluation of alternatives, reveal trade-offs, and aid convergence between divergent stakeholders' views, but it relied more heavily on experts and allowed less participation and deliberation in goal-setting than the other two methods. These results show complementarities amongst methods which imply that hybrid or combined approaches would be best for aiding the water planning process. They also reveal problems confronting the use of participatory approaches and constraints which prevent theoretical promise from being converted into practical results.

Greece is an untypical case from a territorial planning perspective at a European level as it faces constraints and limitations arising by its peripheral position and the limited accessibility to major economic agglomerations and markets. The opportunities of benefiting from a European spatial development strategy are further reduced by missing neighbours, external and internal asymmetries. From the Greek point of view, European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) can be evaluated in terms of three different axes of reflection: improving linkages and spatial relationships to neighbouring countries (particularly European Union member states); bringing national level issues to the European agenda of spatial planning policies; bringing to the national level of spatial planning European-wide relevant issues. In this view ESDP does not reflect the particularities of spatial development in Greece (lack of territorial cohesion, fragmented national geographic space, etc.) but had indirect beneficial effects on the Greek planning system at a national level in spreading institutional innovation, good practices, etc. However, the influence which the ESDP is likely to have on spatial organization and development remains in doubt.

A key component towards sustainability in coastal tourist destinations is to establish monitoring and evaluation schemes in order to measure the impacts of tourism on the economy, society and the environment. Although there is a great deal of frameworks providing the methodological baseline for developing the essential monitoring schemes, the relevant literature has shown that a challenge still exists on adapting these general frameworks to the particularities of the destinations under assessment. This paper presents a framework that measures and monitors sustainability at the local level by introducing a three-tier system of indicators. The framework manages to incorporate the different types of tourism activities as well as the special characteristics of coastal tourist destinations in the Mediterranean while at the same time allows for comparisons among them. The paper emphasizes the role of local stakeholders’ engagement in the development of the monitoring framework and discusses the challenges that emerged during the process. Essentially, the paper provides an alternative way for adjusting general frameworks to allow sustainability evaluations at the local level. In this sense, five types of coastal tourism destinations have been identified as critical in the case of the Mediterranean: beach/maritime destinations, urban/cultural, cruising, recreational boating and nature/ecotourism destinations.

Many islands in the world have become tourist destinations on the basis of their natural and cultural heritage. Islands deserve in many respects a special treatment in view of a sensitive balance between environment, economy and society. The dynamics of development/environment opportunities and constraints in the case of small islands are best exemplified in the case of tourism. The growing demand for tourism opens new opportunities, especially for small islands, providing income and employment. At the same time tourism is causing damage to the island environment, culture, monuments, the local population and even the quality of the visitor's experience threatening the basis of tourist development. This paper provides some reference to the dynamics of tourism and environment in the case of the small Greek islands.