In 2014, a radical shift took place in Danish water planning. Following years of a top-down water planning approach, 23 regional water councils were established to co-create and provide input to Danish authorities on the development of River Basin Management Plans (RBMP). The water councils advised local authorities on the application of measures to improve the physical conditions in Danish streams within a given economic frame. The paper shows the difference the use of water councils (public participation) made by comparing the final water council proposal included in the 2015 RBMP to the RBMPs proposed by the central government (Nature Agency) in 2014. The study concludes that the measures proposed by the water councils will generally deliver better results than the proposed Nature Agency plans, which do not include the same level of participation. Specifically, the water councils with stakeholder involvement proposed a much longer network of streams (3800 km), yielding a better ecological outcome than the shorter stream network (1615 km) proposed by the Nature Agency for the same budget. Having a structured and fixed institutional frame around public participation (top-down meeting bottom-up) can produce cost-effective results, but the results show that cost-effectiveness was not the only deciding factor, and that local circumstances like the practicalities of implementing the measures were also considered when developing the Programmes of Measures. The findings suggest that the use of water councils in water planning has significant advantages, including the fact that the knowledge of local conditions helps to identify efficient solutions at lower costs, which can be useful for administrators, policy-makers, and other stakeholders implementing the Water Framework Directive in years to come.

Diffuse Water Pollution from Agriculture (DWPA) and its governance has received increased attention as a policy concern across the globe. Mitigation of DWPA is a complex problem that requires a mix of policy instruments and a multi-agency, broad societal response. In this paper, opportunities and barriers for developing co-governance, defined as collaborative societal involvement in the functions of government, and its suitability for mitigation of DWPA are reviewed using seven case studies in Europe (Poland, Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands and UK), Australia (Murray-Darling Basin) and North America (State of Minnesota). An analytical framework for assessing opportunities and barriers of co-governance was developed and applied in this review. Results indicated that five key issues constitute both opportunities and barriers, and include: (i) pressure for change; (ii) connected governance structures and allocation of resources and funding; (iii) leadership and establishment of partnerships through capacity building; (iv) use and co-production of knowledge; and (v) time commitment to develop water co-governance.