Exploring the role of governance in effective use of bioassessment for policy delivery and decision-making in inland waters

Abstract

The interface between bioassessment and governance was explored through a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with practitioners drawn from academia and government from seven countries spanning a per capita GDP gradient. Five hypotheses were tested: (1) The enabling environment within which bioassessment functions is largely a product of economic prosperity; (2) Bioassessment works most effectively when part of a formal government-endorsed structure and that appropriate directions are written into legislation; (3) Citizen science offers an opportunity to extend the capacity of bioassessment and to raise awareness of the approach; (4) The transboundary nature of many inland water bodies is a key stimulant for development of bioassessment; and (5) Senior decision-makers, many of whom will not have an ecological background, are not aware of the potential of bioassessment. All the hypotheses were supported by the current study. Six key recommendations emerged from this study: (1) Think in terms of stepwise adoption, with a series of entry points that enables bioassessment to inform policy development; (2) Ensure that ecological ambition is expressed clearly in legislation and specified in regulations; (3) See what bioassessment approaches neighbouring countries are using, rather than developing a method from scratch; (4) Consider the potential for citizen science as a means of boosting coverage of bioassessment and engaging with stakeholders; (5) Develop frameworks which allow bioassessment to usefully contribute to SDG Indicator 6.3.2 reporting; and (6) Persuade senior officials to focus on bioassessment as a cost-effective means of achieving objectives that they already recognise as important, and which align with existing public concerns.

1 Introduction

A recent survey examining the role played by bioassessment in policy delivery and decision-making for inland waters (Kelly et al., 2025; WWQA, 2024) identified strong links between science and the political and social context within which bioassessment functions. Whilst methods that are appropriate for the biogeographical and ecological context are essential, attention also needs to be paid to the interface between science and governance in order to ensure that the biological condition of inland waters is considered before decisions are made. This is, in large part, a matter of capacity, meaning that low per capita GDP countries will be at a disadvantage. However, the question that arises is what other factors contribute to the “enabling environment” – the formal structures of governance that create a framework within which bioassessment results can feed into decision-making processes (Kirschke et al., 2020). And, following on from this, how can bioassessment contribute to fulfilling national reporting obligations for SDG Indicator 6.3.2 (“Proportion of bodies of water with good ambient water quality”)?

The survey on the role of bioassessment in policy delivery (Kelly et al., 2025) made extensive use of semi-quantitative Likert scales (Joshi et al., 2015; Batterton and Hale, 2017) to allow respondents to express agreement or disagreement with statements but it is difficult to capture subtle nuances in a simple survey. This was particularly the case when dealing with governance and the science-policy interface, where a range of legislative traditions interacted with the science-based evidence. For this reason, an alternative approach was adopted in order to follow up these findings, using “qualitative research” methods developed for the social sciences.

Qualitative research (QR) is defined as “an iterative process in which improved understanding to the scientific community is achieved by making new significant distinctions resulting from getting closer to the phenomenon studied” (Aspers and Corte, 2019). This is a very broad definition that can embrace “old school” observational science (Fryer, 1987; Kelly and Duigan, 2022) but also a suite of methods developed for the social sciences, including semi-structured interviews (Knott et al., 2022). Rather than adopt a reductive approach that distils the whole range of experience into a few quantitative measures from which a policy “prescription” can be derived, QR recognises the uniqueness of each situation and, instead, promotes a discourse from which appropriate solutions can be agreed (Dumas and Anderson, 2014). A downside of this approach is that QR is time-consuming, meaning that generalisations can be difficult, especially when the sample size is small, and there is also an ongoing debate about the extent to which it can provide an objective representation of reality (Rendle et al., 2019). However, when coupled with a quantitative approach, QR has the potential to provide a broader, more nuanced picture than is possible with a statistical analysis where complex situations are reduced to an ordinal scale.

This paper describes a study performed using semi-structured interviews to illuminate the survey conclusions presented in Kelly et al. (2025) and WWQA (2024) into the role played by bioassessment in policy delivery and decision-making with a particular focus on the integration of these methods into policy frameworks and water body management activities. In addition, consideration was given to the potential for QR more generally as a tool for exploring the interface between ecology and governance. In this case, results of the WWQA survey on the role played by bioassessment in policy delivery and decision making in inland waters was used to set out some hypotheses that could then be explored in more detail through in-depth interviews.

These hypotheses are:

• That the enabling environment within which bioassessment functions is largely a product of the economic prosperity of the country (see Figure 1b in Kelly et al., 2025).

• That bioassessment, due to its regulatory/legal implications, works most effectively when it is a function of central/regional government, and that appropriate directions (choice of organisms, sampling methods, indices, thresholds, consequences) needs to be written into primary or secondary legislation in order that all parties are clear about the criteria that are to be used to assess ecological health (see Figures 1c and 2 in Kelly et al., 2025).

• That citizen science offers an opportunity to extend the capacity of bioassessment across the per capita GDP scale, and also to raise awareness of the importance of freshwater ecology within a population (see Figure 14 in WWQA, 2024).

• That the transboundary nature of many inland water bodies is a key stimulant for development of bioassessment (see Figure 3 in Kelly et al., 2025).

• That senior officials and ministers, many of whom will not have an ecological background, need to be aware of the potential of bioassessment if it is to be adopted (see Figure 7 in Kelly et al., 2025).

2 Methods

Potential participants were selected from amongst existing contacts of the authors, with a particular focus on government officials in countries that were considering or at an early stage of adoption of bioassessment, whilst ensuring that the countries represented covered a range of per capita GDP. Emails were sent to these explaining the purpose of the study, and those who agreed to participate were invited to a Zoom meeting which lasted about an hour, during which an interview guide was used to ensure that the same topics were covered with all participants, whilst still allowing opportunities for individuals to describe their own situations. The pool of interviewees, thus, did not include anyone from countries with very low or no official interest in bioassessment, and was also limited to individuals who could converse in fluent English. Despite the small number of interviewees, their experiences were diverse and provided contrasting views on the potential for bioassessment in less developed parts of the world and, as one represented an EU Member State, there was also a benchmark with an established regulatory framework where bioassessment plays an important role in water management. Provisions were made for informed consent; right to withdraw; confidentiality, secure data storage and participant anonymity.

Interviews were recorded on Zoom, with automatic transcription enabled. The recordings were then played back to enable the transcription to be edited and clarified, where appropriate. The small sample size meant that systematic qualitative analysis was not appropriate and, instead, relevant sections of each interview were scanned in order to elucidate opinions that addressed the hypotheses outlined above. Pseudonyms are used for anonymity. Square brackets and ellipses are used to indicate where responses had been edited for clarity.

All participants were interviewed strictly in their professional capacity. Prior to each interview, participants received an information sheet describing the study’s purpose, procedures, confidentiality measures, and their rights. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants. The interviews followed UNEP’s established rules for responsible stakeholder engagement (UNEP, 2017, 2020), including voluntary participation, the right to withdraw, and secure handling of information. All data were fully anonymised, and no personal or sensitive information was collected. Generative AI (www.claude.ai) was used to search the text of relevant national primary environmental legislation to establish the legal basis for biological assessment in each country.

3 Results

3.1 Overview of participants

Participants were drawn from a variety of backgrounds, including academia and government agencies (Table 1). All were experienced in the use of bioassessment in their country, and were able to provide insights into how scientific data were integrated into decision-making. The legislation that defines the policy frameworks for each country is listed in Table 2.

3.2 Are there links between bioassessment procedures and policy delivery?

The first question sets the context for the remainder of paper by asking whether bioassessment contributes in any way to decisions on how water bodies are managed in their country. Responses, when ordered from the most to the least positive, show little relationship with per capita GDP. The two that suggested good integration of bioassessment into decision making were drawn from Q1 and Q3 respectively:

Sofija: We assess the ecological integrity of the water body, we normally consider three components: the chemical component, the physical component, and the biological component. So for us, bioassessment is mainly used as the early warning mechanism in which we consider the … water user, the association within the community level, [so] they can see the early warning signs regarding the degradation of the quality by monitoring the macroinvertebrate biological component of the lake, and then inform the water board to … go into intensive assessment of water quality.

Abasi: Yes, in general, but it [could] be involved a little more in this process.

Sofija, however, then went on to suggest that officials higher up were not always inclined to act on information provided by bioassessment.

Two further responses, from (respectively) Q2 and Q3 offered a more pessimistic outlook:

Luciana: Apparently there is, but when we go to the reality, it seems there is no … link of information between the assessment and policy and decision making … The role is just to, you know, to fulfil a requirement. But it’s not the main part of policy and … decisions in environmental management … are mainly taken based on physical and chemical parameters.

Miguel: I would say that we need this information, but for now it’s not being used … they only use chemical parameters in the law, but they recommend the use of biodiversity in bioassessment. If you do not do [it], they will not [enforce it]. It’s not mandatory. I would say.

Finally, three responses indicated that their countries were in an active development and learning phase. First, Kissa (Q1):

Yeah, if fully developed, it is expected to contribute to decisions made on conservation of water resources in the country. But at the moment we are in the process of collecting data, getting to know the different … macroinvertebrates in sampled streams and rivers within the country, so we do not have yet a complete taxa list. [Once we] have a complete taxa list … we [can] develop different metrics for … identifying different stressors. Then eventually we come up with a multimetric index that we can use to assess the different systems. So with that, we can know how the river systems in the country are faring, based on their ecological integrity, whether it’s degrading, being degraded.

Then, Lerato (Q1):

Yeah, to some extent it does but it is actually very new in the country. We are just starting to work on it, and we are not … yet applying it to all rivers.

And finally, Adebayo (Q2):

We are just trying to develop our biomonitoring … we have included it in our work plan for 2025… We’ve got an idea and we even submitted the project to UNECE [United Nations Economic Committee for Europe, responsible for the Water Convention (on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses)].

These results in isolation do not appear to support hypothesis 1 (that the enabling environment is a function of economic prosperity); however, recruitment was focussed on countries that were starting to explore the potential for bioassessment and no countries from the richest quartile of the per capita GDP range were involved, meaning that this is not necessarily an accurate representation of the entire per capita GDP scale. The recent political history of Brazil, the second-richest country in the survey, might also have confounded interpretation of results in relation to this hypothesis (Mendes Motta and Hauber, 2023), particularly as the overall sample size for this study is small.

Survey results also suggest that wealthier countries face challenges in integrating bioassessment results into decision-making. Carvalho et al. (2019) identified integration across policy sectors as a major challenge for implementation of the Water Framework Directive in Europe, and this is likely to apply more broadly. In the case of countries with low per capita GDP as well as, potentially, climate-related challenges, the highest priority may be provision of an adequate quantity of potable water, along with needs to service agriculture. In such circumstances, debate is less about the potential of bio-assessment than it is about its opportunity cost (what else might be achieved with the budget bioassessment requires – see Discussion) in relation to SDG 6 (“Ensure availability and sustainable management of clean water and sanitation for all”) as a whole.

3.3 Does bioassessment need a legal framework in order to be effective?

Biologists tend to look at a sample collected as part of a monitoring program in terms of the biological composition, considering how variations in sampling methods, for example, may influence this, and also using relationships between biota and principal stressors to relate the composition to the condition of the environment (Simaika et al., 2024). Our argument is that, for effective bioassessment, we should also see a biological sample in terms of how it feeds into the process of catchment management. This can take many forms but understanding the legal/regulatory framework is necessary if the potential of bioassessment is to be maximised.

The second hypothesis, then, is that bioassessment, due to its regulatory/legal implications works most effectively when it is a function of central/regional government and that appropriate directions (choice of organisms, sampling methods, indices, thresholds, consequences) need to be written into primary or secondary legislation in order that all parties are clear about the criteria that are to be used to assess ecological health. The rationale here is that bioassessment, if it is to influence formal decision-making processes, needs to be, itself, well-regulated and integrated into the organisations responsible for decisions. This does not rule out a role for the private sector (as contractors), stakeholders (via citizen science) or even for a degree of “self-policing” of industry (if there is sufficient trust), but it does mean that key stages need to be managed from within the government apparatus and, above all, that desired outcomes are codified. This hypothesis was explored via a series of questions, first addressing particular “entry points” where a country might consider stepwise adoption of bioassessment to address particular policy briefs and then going on to explore how bioassessment was organised in the countries represented in the survey.

3.3.1 Is there a requirement for bio-assessment in pre-project environmental impact assessment (EIA)?

Apart from Adebayo, all affirmed that some form of biological assessment was required at this stage:

Miguel: Yes, it’s strongly recommended, and some people are already looking for this data [when] doing these projects. So [if] I want to open a company [in one of the more developed States of Brazil] that will affect the environment … the environmental office of that State will ask me to look for biological data.

Abasi: Yes, yes. … it is a legal requirement stipulated in the Environmental Management Act of 2004 that it is compulsory to conduct an EIA. So within the EIA, you have also to study the ecological integrity of the area. So it depends with the nature of the area in which you want to implement the project. If [it] is very close or it is within the catchment of the lake or river, you must do a full waterboard ecological integrity assessment in which you have to assess the chemistry to establish the baseline condition… you [also] have to [assess the] physical component of the water body, but also you have to identify the existing species.

Kissa: [Biological data] forms part of the initial assessment before the investor is given a go-ahead to put up the factory … that role falls within a body called the National Environmental Management Authority that carries out environmental impact assessments before projects are implemented that are near river systems.

Lerato: Here in … Lesotho we are doing [it routinely] [where there are water developments like building of dams] … so that’s where we do bioassessment. We are [using] SASS [Dickens and Graham, 2002] on those rivers where developments are … being made.

The questions did not probe whether there was any written requirement for the types of biological information on which such decisions were based, but there is, at least, a requirement in most of the countries considered for some sort of biological data. Nor did the questions specifically address whether these assessments were performed by the public or private sectors, though responses seem to suggest a mixture of both.

3.3.2 Is there a requirement for a polluting industry to demonstrate that its activities do not have any impact?

This question addressed bioassessment associated with infrastructure that may impact ecological condition of watercourses. Again, answers suggest a mixture of public and private sector engagement and all, with the exception of Adebayo and Kissa, acknowledged some use of bioassessment for this purpose. Miguel indicated that, as environmental regulation was devolved, implementation was patchy:

Yes, in some states, yes, but not in all states of Brazil, because this environmental law, it’s regulated by the state government. So in some states it’s strongly recommended, and they ask for this data, but in other states they are more flexible. But … in the most developed states of Brazil …they ask for … this data. Also in those states where we have a huge biodiversity, like in Pantanal and in the Amazon … they are more careful about this.

Lerato noted that only one sector was covered by these provisions:

Not yet. But we do that for the mines. [The mines] do have that obligation to demonstrate the impact of their activities on water resources through biological methods and … physical chemical methods. So they share the data. They do that regularly.

However, Abasi described a more comprehensive system:

Yes, it’s … compulsory, because, after conducting the EIA they have to come up with [an] environmental management program which [is] prepared, based on the existing status before the implementation of the project. So one of the assignments of the factory is to ensure that they are maintaining the integrity … of the ecology which … [was] existing before the implementation of the project.

There is some standardization of approach within the country:

We have a … harmonized guideline … we call it TARISS [Tanzania River Scoring System: Kaaya et al., 2015; Kitaka et al., 2024]. It was harmonized from the South African [index for] macroinvertebrates.

Finally, Sofija’s response was negative, but only because this type of monitoring was encompassed by the national surveillance covered by the next two questions.

3.3.3 Is there monitoring of strategic water bodies to protect ecosystem services and sites with high conservation interest?

Luciana and Adebayo both agreed that this was currently not being undertaken in their countries; however, all others affirmed that some monitoring of this type was already underway. Kissa’s answer overlapped with that for the previous category so is not included here; the other responses were as follows:

Miguel: Yeah, I would say that we are starting. I think that the people in the government … are starting to know about ecosystem process and services, but for now I would say that they do not know how to use this information and how to start looking for these.

Abasi: Within the annual budget of the Government we normally set a fund for ecosystem protection … mainly … to support the ecosystem services, which means that we conserve the ecology [so as] to be able to offer the services obtained from the ecosystem for the current generation and for the coming generation. So the fund is separated within the government financial budget which, comprising the funding from internal, but also the fund from other developing partners who are supporting us for water quality management. When we come to the … disbursement of the fund we come to the problem, because you might find that only 30% of the allocated budget was dispersed. So when we come to implementation, people started to prioritize.

Lerato: We have this surveillance that is done every 5 years in the Orange-Senqu basin by the four countries that are sharing the basin [Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa]. It is called the Joint Basin Survey.”

This will be discussed later in the paper when the role of international agreements is considered.

Sofija affirmed that this type of surveillance was undertaken as a result of membership of the EU.

3.3.4 Is there nationwide surveillance of biological quality to prioritise river basin improvements?

Again, Luciana and Adebayo said that this was not being undertaken (though Adebayo has plans to move towards this objective), Miguel was also pessimistic:

If you look to the law, they only will ask you …, what are [the] chemical and physical parameters. For example … in this state - it’s a small state, and they take care [of] about 60 sampling points every two months - they only access water, chemical and physical parameters. I’m trying to convince them to start work with biological communities, and they understand. But they do not know how to do that. So maybe we, yeah, we will need to help them to training people and hiring people that can do that. Yes.

Abasi said that such plans existed, although these could not always be fulfilled due to budgetary constraints:

There are 89 monitoring station within the country. But … when we make the evaluation annually, we might find maybe it’s only 20 station which have been monitored.

Kissa’s response was:

Okay. So within the department within the water quality management department, we have a national water quality monitoring network. And at the moment it’s also being updated under that project. It’s called the SWAQ-Uganda project [Sustainable water quality management supporting Uganda’s development ambitions (SWAQ-Uganda) | IIASA]. The national water quality monitoring network is being updated.

Subsequent comments from Kissa made it clear that the biological component of this project was currently under development and is not yet part of the current decision-making framework. The exception was Lake Victoria and other large lakes where phytoplankton is routinely assessed, along with chlorophyll a and other measures of lake productivity.

Lerato had previously explained about the Orange-Senqu basin survey, but went on to say:

[The] Department of Water Affairs [also has] our routine monitoring that we do for bio assessment, although it’s not in all in all rivers; it is for the rivers of importance that we have chosen. We monitor the biological parameters at least twice a year [using SASS].

Sofija again said that this was covered by national implementation of the WFD.

3.3.5 Overview

The initial expectation was that these four entry points represented logical stages of adoption that a country might follow. In fact, there was very poor linkage between these and per capita GDP. The two countries that had all four stages in place were the richest (Latvia) and one of the poorest (Lesotho) whilst the second richest (Brazil) had only partial agreement due to differences between states within the country. Tanzania, also a relatively poor country, had attempts at all four stages but Abasi acknowledged that the budget necessary for full surveys was not always forthcoming. On the other hand, there was a trend of decreasing adoption of the four stages (Figure 1), with a biological component of pre-project EIAs being widespread, but nationwide surveillance being enacted in less than half of countries and, even then, with the proviso that budgets were not always forthcoming.

Figure 1

3.4 What is the pathway from sample collection to a decision?

There was general agreement that, to contribute to policy delivery, there needed to be a well-understood and agreed pathway from sample collection to decision. In this context, the response of Luciana was interesting because her country was the only one represented in the survey where the private sector played a significant role:

Yeah, the sampling, the analysis of the samples, the use of biological data and the use of indices … is done by external and private consultants. There is one national guideline [from] our national institution [IDAEM – Instituto de Hidrología, Meteorología y Estudios Ambientales: www.ideam.gov.co] in terms of the surveillance of aquatic resources … they suggest to use the BMWP [Biological Monitoring Working Party: Hawkes, 1998] as the National Biotic Index.

However, she went on to say that decisions were still made based on physical and chemical parameters, partly, she felt, because:

We have not established those ecological boundaries to make a decision based on biological data…. at the end of the day the results which are being used are mainly the results coming from physical and chemical parameters.

She agreed with the need for a well-organised framework but thought that it did not yet exist in Colombia. All others used, or anticipated using, government employees for the collection and analysis of most biological samples. Some – such as Abasi – also saw a role for citizen scientists, to build capacity at a very local level, in addition to developing the professional laboratories and extending the network.

Kissa saw the importance of legislation for shaping the process:

Without having legislation in place, even if we have all the equipment put in place, and all the infrastructure in place, and all the personnel trained, if we do not have a regulation that is geared towards ensuring that water resources are of good ecological integrity and putting in place standards to follow, …. then I do not think it will be very effective. But if it’s in place, we have … standards to keep us in check and to ensure that different projects that are coming up are feeding into that regulation that has been developed.

Lerato was satisfied that, in her case, a good framework for using bioassessment was in place but had some concerns about capacity:

But we have a challenge of personnel. There are very few people in the Water Quality Section. We are only two, and that’s not enough to cover the whole country … we have around 74 rivers in the country [and] two people are not enough to cover those. Even though we have the expertise we are not enough to do all the job.

Abasi described a well-organised system in his country; however, final decisions were made by Basin Water Officers who worked to guidelines but who had some latitude in how they treated results, depending on local circumstances. There was no nationally-recognised “threshold” to separate acceptable from unacceptable TARISS assessments.

Responses to this section can be summarised as general recognition that the requirement for biological data to be used in water management decisions needs to be set out in legislation, for there to be consistency in how this is performed across the country (set out in regulations or via national standards) and for some recognition of appropriate thresholds that differentiate acceptable and unacceptable performance. However, establishing this process presupposes adequate capacity and capability within the country. Responses generally pointed to this being primarily a function of government officials; however, interviewees also drew attention to instances where “citizen scientists” (see next section) and the private sector could also contribute. Thus, the responses offer general support for hypothesis 2, so long as there is flexibility in the implementation to meet local circumstances.

3.5 Does “citizen science” have a role to play in bioassessment in your country?

The earlier WWQA survey highlighted that there was widespread interest in “citizen science”-based approaches to bioassessment across all four per capita GDP quartiles (WWQA, 2024), and this was further explored during the interviews. The questions did not differentiate between the different “typologies” of citizen science (sensu Freitag, 2016) but the responses indicated a range of levels of engagement, from using local residents to collect samples through to more co-operative approaches where community groups developed an awareness of the condition of local water bodies, and of how their actions might affect these.

At the most basic level, Adebayo noted that citizen science provided an opportunity to collect water quality data from areas in the north of country where there was political instability due to the actions of the terrorist organisation Boco Haram:

You know, there are areas you cannot access because of the security or because of distance … and so … you have schools where you have science teachers … graduates of chemistry who are teaching in secondary schools … so we incorporate them and they are doing well. They take samples for us. We give them the procedures, and they [are] also getting to understand the technicalities of water quality … So I think citizen science is a very good idea.

Abasi went a step further whilst still seeing citizens primarily as a resource for data collection:

Tanzania, as a country, is about 95,003 square kilometres. [It is a] huge country. I do not think that the Government can have enough employees to be everywhere. I think that the effective approach is just to make the local people who are living in those areas to make them … so that they can be able [to sample] maybe on a weekly basis, and submit this to the regulator who then can come for the verification and validation of the information. But it’s not [just] about having more employees, it’s making the community, say, maybe from the school living local area, to … participate in monitoring and assessment of biological components of the water body.

So, for us, … bioassessment is mainly used as the early warning mechanism in which we consider the citizens … [who are the] water user … can see the early warning sign regarding the degradation of the quality by monitoring the macroinvertebrate … component of the lake, and then inform the water board to … go into intensive assessment of the lake.

Kissa, in a neighbouring country where bioassessment is not yet in routine use, certainly saw similar potential:

If there are different communities that are trained, and they are living alongside a given water body, and they have been trained to identify some particular organisms … maybe monthly, and then [pass] the data to the main body, like the ministry, periodically … can I say real-time data as in consistent data collection, to know the various changes that are happening within the systems, and that would also help the ministry to avoid having data gaps … And if there is any alarming situation, and … they are not seeing some particular organisms that they were seeing before, they can easily communicate … for the Ministry to make a quick response in case of an emergency.

These two responses are, incidentally, similar to the way that citizen science functions in the UK, using the Angler’s Riverfly Monitoring Initiative (Brooks et al., 2019).

Finally, Lerato indicated the potential for a different type of engagement:

So, recently we engaged ten primary schools to do citizen science monitoring … it was just a pilot to see if it would work, if we wanted to include … citizen science monitoring in the curriculum of primary schools… They were very excited in doing it. We did it for six months [and] now they are in the process of engaging our Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of Education and Training so that they can get into a Memorandum of Understanding for that program to be included in the curriculum of primary schools. We are just in the initiation stage of that.

Lerato explained that, for this citizen science monitoring, they used the miniSASS technique (Graham et al., 2004) developed in neighbouring South Africa before further expounding the rationale:

When you teach children from a very young age, [they] grow up with that knowledge, and they will grow up knowing that it is not good to throw something into water because now they are able to determine when there is a problem [with] the quality of water. … The children are good advocates because they can influence even their parents. We did not take the students at high school level because … we did not find … much interest. … When we got to the primary level, they were so excited … By training the kids at primary level we are building a better future generation.

Lerato’s vision of citizen science is one that has less to do with the data that are being generated than with the effect that greater awareness will have on the participants. The ideal citizen science model will tick both boxes: providing extra information to official bodies with finite resources as well as educating and informing local communities.

Overall, these responses offer qualified support for hypothesis 3 (that citizen science offers an opportunity to extend the capacity of bioassessment across the per capita GDP scale, and also to raise awareness of the importance of freshwater ecology). Not all respondents were aware of active citizen science programs in their countries; of those who were, there was a continuum from using citizen science primarily as a means of collecting data, through to more active engagement by spotting warning signs and informing authorities, and finally, to a model where bioassessment also has a broader educational role. Where citizen science contributes to implementation of legislation, questions of data trustworthiness and validation need to be asked (Gumiero et al., 2025) but there is a widespread perception that the potential of citizen science is underused for policy and regulatory purposes (Conrad and Hilchey, 2011; Carlson and Cohen, 2018). How this is addressed will vary from country to country but, for the value of this resource to be unlocked, there needs to be both a recognition by authorities and steps to enable the flow of data and information between partners. A question not asked of interviewees, but worth consideration, is how bioassessment might contribute to obtaining data to meet SDG indicator 6.3.2 objectives. The miniSASS approach mentioned by Lerato, for example, has already been proposed as a proxy measurement for SDG indicator 6.3.2 score (Taylor et al., 2022).

3.6 What role do international agreements play in the adoption of bioassessment?

The original survey indicated a trend of increasing cross-border collaboration as per capita GDP increased (Kelly et al., 2025); however, the interviews highlighted a considerable role for international agreements to motivate uptake of bioassessments, even with per capita GDP was low. Lerato offered a good example from her country:

We have this surveillance that is done every five years in the … Orange-Senqu basin by the four countries that are sharing the basin … we just did the third one in 2021 … there is a thorough bio assessment … we will even do eDNA.

Context here is important, as the Orange-Senqu basin spans four countries, two of which have substantially higher per capita GDP than Lesotho, and the Joint Basin Survey for the Orange-Senqu River is modelled on surveys performed under the auspices of the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR]. Lerato went on:

We visit them [ICPDR] to see what they are doing, and do with them what they are doing for some days, maybe for a week and then come back and implement [this] when we are doing our [surveys].

This points at two levels of co-operation: regional (the Orange-Senqu basin countries) and international (via the ICPDR – all Q3/Q4 countries except Moldova and Ukraine which are Q2). Similar stories were told by others. Kissa and Abasi both agreed that international collaboration on Lake Victoria, for example, was important, but without going into any further details. Adebayo’s plans for introducing bioassessment in Nigeria were placed in the context of the transboundary Niger River, with the funding proposal being developed for the UNECE:

We need to build the capacity of staff on bioassessment … they are aware [of the benefits of bioassessment] … even up to the regional level at Niger Basin Authority … because they ask countries to submit the operational plan, and bioassessment is one of the projects Nigeria submitted.

Adebayo also mentioned the Lake Chad Basin Commission although there was no specific reference to bioassessment as a result of this either during the interview or from a subsequent scan of their website.¹ Adebayo also noted that there was a greater focus on water quality in his country since SDG Indicator 6.3.2 had been introduced.

Major political blocs such as EU (composed of Q3 and Q4 countries) have mandated integration of bioassessment into decision-making, with legislation such as the WFD and Habitats Directive playing an important role. Sofija, representing one of the less well-off countries in the EU, acknowledged that only the minimum assessment specified by the WFD was performed:

Most of our water bodies [are] assessed only once in every six years [as] we do not have funding. We do not have money for such a monitoring …

She went on to affirm that the problem was not a lack of awareness of the potential value of bioassessment, and that relatively senior (though possibly not the highest) officials in the Ministry were sympathetic to her requests.

The EU also offers a framework for the management of transboundary rivers, ensuring that all parties share common ambitions; even so the practice of managing transboundary rivers, even within a relatively mature political framework, may be harder than the theory:

Most of our … nutrient pollution comes from Lithuania [and] Lithuania [does not] care that the pollution goes to Latvia, and the Latvians say ‘what can we do about it? Nothing.’

However, as well as rivers shared with EU neighbours, Latvia also shares the catchment of the Western Drina and some smaller rivers with Belarus and Russia. The deteriorating political situation in eastern Europe has led to a breakdown of relationships with Belarus and Russia with inevitable consequences for integrated catchment management. In the case of Latvia and non-EU neighbours, the situation is of elevated tension rather than outright war, but there is a literature on the impacts of conflict on shared rivers (Toset et al., 2000; Brochmann and Gleditsch, 2012) that would suggest that bioassessment would be a low priority in this type of situation, particularly when water scarcity was a major issue (Schmidt et al., 2021; Shuval, 2000). Sofija was the only person to raise this issue in this study, but it served as a useful reminder that there is an obverse face to international co-operation, and that the uptake of effective bioassessment as a tool for policy delivery might be limited by the wider geopolitical situation.

This means that hypothesis 4 (that the transboundary nature of many inland water bodies is a key stimulant for development of bioassessment) may need to be modified slightly. International agreements clearly played an important role for several of the individuals interviewed. It is important, however, that these are considered at two levels: direct transboundary agreements where physical proximity creates challenges (e.g., Latvia with Lithuania, Belarus and Russia) but also broader economic unions where consistent application of environmental regulations creates a shared ambition (e.g., Latvia with the rest of the EU). It is the second of these that has been most important for the establishment of bioassessment in Latvia. Finally, hypothesis 4 also has a darker reciprocal side, where the breakdown of international relations hinders, rather than helps, the uptake of bioassessment.

3.7 What are the principal constraints to the integration of biology into policy

The four reasons for not using bioassessment that received the most agreement from survey respondents were (in decreasing order of importance): weak governance, chemical monitoring considered sufficient, no link to policy and insufficient capacity (Kelly et al., 2025). Of these, insufficient capacity mirrored the most common response to a separate question on factors that limit the potential of bioassessment programs where these were in place: insufficient funding (Kelly et al., 2025). All are related insofar as they relate to governance frameworks: if senior officials see chemical monitoring as sufficient, then there will be no incentive to include references to bioassessment in policy instruments and, as a result, no reason for state funds to be released. For this reason, these themes were all explored further through the interviews.

Subjects were asked if, in their experience, government officials were aware of the benefits that bioassessment can bring to water management. Lerato’s response echoed several others included in the study, recognising difficulties in engagement with officials and ministers:

When you go out to the higher authorities [and] into the ministerial level … we struggle to bring them to the level of understanding. They only give consent where there is a real problem. Now there’s fish kills [or] something out of the ordinary; that is when they get concerned. Now, when we tell them that … [the] time when … we need to monitor this [has passed]. I was trying to prevent this…. They are more interested in curable measures than preventative [measures].

A similar view was given by Abasi who, although working in a generally supportive environment, found getting funds from an already stretched budget was an ongoing challenge:

… so we still need to create awareness and tell them the benefit with regard to bioassessment, so that they can prefer it to other components.

Kissa agreed with this. Her view was that management within her own department (water quality) was well aware of the benefits of bioassessment, but that other sections of the Ministry still needed to be convinced:

It’s kind of like informing them about the benefits of having a biomonitoring system in the country, and how it can also integrate within their work. So you may find that maybe personnel within the engineering department … may not know much about biomonitoring, but if we made presentations to them and informed them about the benefits of biomonitoring, what happens with the systems if certain organisms are missing, or if the quality of the water is impaired and if they are also putting up infrastructure within the river systems or within the lake. What would happen? How would they really affect the different organisms within those systems?

Similarly, Adebayo was convinced that Ministry officials were aware of the benefits, even if funding had not yet been secured. However, Miguel was less optimistic:

I think they are not convinced yet. But we need to do this job.

Luciana, who works in a university, whilst agreeing with Miguel, took a long-term view, saying that the engineers needed to be introduced to ecological concepts during their degrees. Abasi agreed with this:

… when a graduate from engineering [comes] and begins employment, he should have some … core concepts regarding bioassessment so that [he] can integrate [these] when they have been assigned [to do] a certain job.

Adebayo, by contrast, spoke from the perspective of an engineer:

I think they [ecologists] need to push more. They need to sensitize the government on the importance of biomonitoring. … we have been well developed when it comes to physical, chemical and microbiological analysis, even at the university level. Because I’ve not actually seen, even at the university level … a colleague or a friend that wants to go into bioassessment. … Maybe there should be a program at the university level?

The large number of responses to the survey from Nigeria (Supplementary material in Kelly et al., 2025), however, contradicts this to some extent, suggesting that there is interest amongst university academics but not, perhaps, enough opportunities to convert this interest into practical career routes for graduates.

Sofija, representing an EU Member State, was the most positive, agreeing that there were sympathetic ears in her Ministry at all but the very highest levels.

The question in this section can be crystallised to “do we need to change the attitude of managers, or improve the bioassessment methods that are available within a country, or both”. Responses to this varied: Lerato, for example said:

I do not think bioassessment methods need any improvement. What needs to be changed is the mentality of the managers, the authorities.

Her experience, with a large neighbouring country that has developed bioassessment methods appropriate to the conditions in her country, is in contrast to Miguel who saw both sides of the argument, as well as a case for ecologists to be more pragmatic:

Yeah, we have to change. I think that they [officials] have [the] idea. But its very superficial. But we need to do this education … to make them understand … the importance of this [bioassessment] … They also need numbers [in order to] understand: … how much will it cost, how long will it take, how many people … then we are not good in doing that. So its also a good exercise for us.

Luciana saw the two options as intertwined:

We do not have the chance to get improved methods if we do not have support from the Government.

Sofija, however, went on to contextualise similar challenges in her own country, despite a generally sympathetic attitude, acknowledging that decision-making was strongly connected to funding with her ministry in competition with other ministries:

And those are ministries like health … who could buy new covid vaccines.

Overall, these responses point to limited agreement with hypothesis 5 (that higher officials, many of whom will not have an ecological background, are aware of the potential of bioassessment). Awareness of the benefits amongst senior officials and ministers seems to be essential if hypothesis 2 is to be realised, because it is these groups who will be able to shape the next generation of legislative instruments and ensure that a need to define acceptable ecological condition is included as a prerequisite to sustainable resource management.

4 Discussion

4.1 Bioassessment in its socio-political context

The pictures that emerged from these interviews offer deeper insights into the contexts within which bioassessment operates, going beyond what could be gleaned from quantitative analysis of survey results. Each interviewee offered different perspectives, emphasising the need to consider effective bioassessment not just as an application of freshwater science that is appropriate to the biogeographical circumstances, but also emphasising a need to reflect upon how socio-economics, governance and politics affects the way that bioassessment data will influence the water management process. This aligns with a growing body of literature demonstrating that environmental monitoring is strongly shaped by governance systems and political priorities (Pahl-Wostl, 2015; Vörösmarty et al., 2010).

The extreme instance of this was Miguel’s reflections on the effect of recently departed right-wing populist president Jair Bolsonaro:

The last 4 years with Bolsonaro were terrible. Terrible. Yeah, for the biodiversity, for the environmental politics. It was terrible … Now the government is listening more. It changed a bit. But we also need to improve a lot. We still need to improve a lot.

This broader political context within which bioassessment has to operate was difficult to discern from the main survey, as were the reflections from Sofija on the impacts of the Russia/Ukraine war on management of transboundary rivers, and Adebayo’s reflections on problems collecting data from within unstable regions of his own country. Such dynamics are consistent with wider environmental governance literature, which shows that political instability and policy shifts can significantly constrain environmental protection and monitoring (Duit and Galaz, 2008; Ostrom, 2009). This broader context is visualised in Figure 2 where the formal science of bioassessment (1) is nested inside successive layers of the regulatory regime (2), national policies (3) and, ultimately, society’s environmental aspirations (4). This conceptualisation is consistent with socio-ecological systems thinking and adaptive governance frameworks (Folke et al., 2005). However, this creates a genuine challenge: when a populist president wins power by promising economic growth and removal of the powers of an established environment agency, then any hope of establishing or maintaining an “enabling environment” for bioassessment seem to be challenged, particularly where ecosystems are already under significant pressure (Rockström et al., 2009).

Figure 2

4.2 Creating an “enabling environment” for effective bioassessment

An “enabling environment” can be defined as the various policies, legislative and planning instruments, along with institutional capacity, that provide the operational basis for implementing bioassessment (Kirschke et al., 2020). This aligns with broader governance frameworks which emphasise the importance of institutional structures and regulatory capacity in environmental management (OECD, 2011; Pahl-Wostl, 2015).

There was broad agreement that bioassessment needs to be part of a well-organised process set within a legislative/regulatory framework, supporting hypotheses 1 and 2. This supports findings from studies of the Water Framework Directive, where ecological monitoring is most effective when embedded within robust legal and institutional frameworks (Hering et al., 2010; Birk et al., 2012).

There were differences, however, in the form that this took, with wider adoption of bioassessment for pre-project EIA and assessment of the impacts of specific industrial/mining infrastructure being more widespread than wider-scale monitoring of strategic water bodies or to protect ecosystem services (Figure 1). Nationwide surveillance was only practiced in three of the countries covered, with one of these indicating that the intention was there but the extent of surveys was severely curtailed by funding constraints. A key recommendation from this study, then, should be to define realistic entry points for bioassessment, and not to assume that the nationwide surveillance networks found in high-income countries are universally applicable. This reflects wider calls for context-sensitive approaches to ecological assessment (Bonada et al., 2006; Poikane et al., 2020). The importance of international agreements was also highlighted by several participants, particularly for transboundary water bodies where there are important ecosystem services in need of protection (Lake Victoria is a good example, mentioned by both Abasi and Kissa). International cooperation has been widely recognised as critical for managing transboundary water systems and protecting shared ecosystem services (Zeitoun and Warner, 2006; Kelly et al., 2025). Whether such agreements specify bioassessment was not always clear, but the incentive that these create to understand the ecosystems that are to be protected may encourage adoption of bioassessment by participating countries. An international agreement might also increase opportunities for accessing international development funds, as Adebayo anticipated for Nigeria.

Most participants assumed that the structures responsible for bioassessment were situated within state-funded bodies. The exception was Luciana who saw the private sector playing a role in her country. The early entry points (i.e., pre-project EIA, assessing impacts of specific industrial facilities) offer the potential for the state to provide the legislation specifying the need and approaches and to evaluate responses, but for private contractors to do the sampling and analysis. This does, however, require a measure of trust and professionalism. An aspect not addressed but which may be relevant, is the need for accreditation of laboratories responsible for bioassessment – a standard requirement for chemistry and microbiology laboratories (Adams et al., 2022; Sreya et al., 2024) but not yet for ecologists. Accreditation would, in turn, require minimum requirements for bioassessment to be set out in regulations.

Finance was a recurring issue for all interviewees, irrespective of per capita GDP, and was also highlighted as a constraint by Kelly et al. (2025). This is consistent with global analyses showing that environmental monitoring competes with other development priorities, particularly in lower-income countries (World Bank, 2020; Dasgupta, 2021). Sofija’s response emphasised the need to think of finance not just in terms of the costs and benefits of bioassessment but in terms of broader “opportunity costs” – the loss of other alternatives when one alternative is chosen: there are competing demands for the limited government resources not just within the ministry itself but also between ministries. Again, this will be more acute in a low per capita GDP country, and recognition of this should frame the guidance that WWQA offers.

4.3 Appropriate bioassessment metrics and thresholds

Two low per capita GDP countries had thriving bioassessment programs, both based on relatively simple metrics (SASS and TARISS) ultimately derived from the long-established BMWP (Hawkes, 1998). This supports the view that relatively simple and robust indices can be highly effective in resource-limited settings (Dallas, 2007; Bonada et al., 2006). Kissa, though in a neighbouring country to Tanzania (where TARISS) is used, was developing a new metric based on recent advances in metric development from high per capita GDP countries. It will be interesting, when her study is complete, to compare approaches, firstly, to see if relationships with stressors are stronger with her metric than with TARISS, but also whether barriers to adoption (training, time to process samples, need for refrigeration etc) are greater. There is a need for an informed debate about the relative benefits of diffusion and adaptation of the “tried and tested” over imposition of Western “state of the art” approaches but these interviews did not explore this question in sufficient detail to draw conclusions. South America has examples of both development of novel metrics (Ferreira et al., 2011) and adoption of established metrics such as BMWP, as mentioned by Luciana. This reflects long-standing discussions about the transferability and regional adaptation of biomonitoring tools (Hawkins et al., 2000).

A more fundamental need, perhaps, is the definition of thresholds. This has been a major preoccupation in high per capita GDP countries (e.g., Davies and Jackson, 2006; Poikane et al., 2014, 2015) but few of the responses indicated that this was a major priority. This may, in turn, reflect the wording of national legislation: the WFD, for example, makes a categorical distinction between ecological status classes with actions dependent upon outcomes; a different wording, or a different emphasis on the importance of ecological data, might give more scope for interpretation, as Abasi indicated was the case for Tanzania. At the very least, expressing ecological ambition in legislation, and developing this in regulations, seems to be a necessary first step to giving bioassessment a meaningful role in national water management programs, consistent with experience under the Water Framework Directive (Hering et al., 2010; Poikane et al., 2014).

4.4 Bioassessment and SDG Indicator 6.3.2

Currently, “level 1” reporting for SDG Indicator 6.3.2 (“Proportion of bodies of water with good ambient water quality”) is based on five core water quality parameters, with an option for more detailed reporting on ambient water quality (level 2), “incorporating any data on any water quality parameter that they consider relevant. For example, they can include data on heavy metals or biological parameters, or data collected through approaches other than the basic physical and chemical methods used for level 1”. The potential for bioassessment to complement level 1 reporting has been recognised in global monitoring frameworks (UNEP, 2021) and explored by Taylor et al. (2022); however, feedback from interviewees in this study raises the prospect that this could go further. The importance of international agreements as a stimulus for bioassessment was identified by several participants and, whilst SDG Indicator 6.3.2 was only explicitly mentioned by Adebayo, this is an obligation to which all nations represented in the study had adopted. Two questions arise:

• What is the cost of bioassessment relative to the cost of chemical analyses required for a “level 1” analysis for SDG Indicator 6.3. 2? Biological monitoring offers an integrated assessment of ecological condition over time, which may reduce sampling frequency requirements compared to chemical monitoring (Bonada et al., 2006) and,

• Can bioassessments be calibrated against water quality targets to generate a proxy “level 1” classification using robust statistical procedures? Advances in ecological modelling and empirical approaches have increasingly enabled the linkage of biological metrics to environmental gradients and management thresholds (Poikane et al., 2014, 2019; Phillips et al., 2024).

Given that SDG Indicator 6.3.2 is intended as a high-level overview of national conditions, then a positive response to these two questions (i.e., lower cost and reliable outcomes when compared to physical and chemical analyses) may offer an alternative option, especially when there are already national or local initiatives (along the lines of SASS or TARISS) that can provide a starting point. This would provide a more substantial argument with which to persuade senior officials and minsters than more abstract arguments about the pros and cons of bioassessment, especially where data were being collected specifically for SDG Indicator 6.3.2 compliance. Although Kissa was working with European scientists to develop new metrics, Abasi, in neighbouring Tanzania, was content that a local metric, TARISS, was effective. Both may have valid reasons for their choices, so the emphasis needs to be on frameworks that ensure appropriate testing of existing approaches. A presumption that building from indigenous foundations is a better starting point than parachuting a “state-of-the-art” method into a country, also seems appropriate, so long as the possibility of local methods not being available or not responding to the” level 1″ stressors is also recognised.

4.5 The potential of qualitative research to explore the interface between bioassessment and governance

There are precedents for the use of social science-based approaches in ecology (Moon et al., 2016; Sutherland et al., 2018), recognising that ecological questions very often have interfaces with social and political topics, and that it is important to define and understand, rather than ignore, these additional layers of complexity. Such interdisciplinary approaches are increasingly seen as essential for addressing complex environmental challenges (Ostrom, 2009). The use of semi-structured interviews aligns with established qualitative research methodologies (Creswell and Poth, 2018; Patton, 2015). The search terms “semi structured interview” and “ecology,” for example, elicits a quarter of a million hits on Google Scholar, though when the terms “semi-structured interview” are combined with “bioassessment” and “governance” the number falls to 579 [based on searches on 11 November 2024] covering both inland and coastal waters and a variety of research questions. Of these, only Nzarora et al. (2024) overlapped with the research questions addressed here, offering a useful counterpoint as it compares responses within a single country (Rwanda) rather than between countries, as here. The focus of a group of people with a shared socio-economic framework (Rwanda corresponds to Q1 in our survey, comparable to Tanzania, Uganda and Lesotho) was capacity (equipment, funding, technical skills and taxonomic knowledge) rather than the governance challenges highlighted here. The perspective that emerged from Nzarora et al. (2024) was that there needed to be a good understanding of bioassessment within a country before the debate about how to incorporate it into governance frameworks starts. We agree with this; however, by focussing on a single country, governance becomes a constant rather than a variable, meaning that its importance may be overlooked. Nzarora et al. (2024) offer a counterweight to the focus on international agreements in the present study, highlighting that, ultimately, the will to adopt needs to come from inside a country rather than being imposed from outside although, from a methodological perspective, we can also see how the objectives set by researchers can, to some extent, shape the outcomes.

Some other limitations of the study are:

• It was limited to people who spoke good English, whereas the survey reported in Kelly et al. (2025) was also available in French, Portuguese and Spanish. Four of the participants represented former British colonies; three of these used metrics derived ultimately from the BMWP, an index developed in Britain.

• The sample size was small relative to many studies that use semi-structured interviews. Not only would a bigger dataset have been useful but better stratification to cover the per capita GDP gradient and also different roles (academics, field officers, senior officials) within a country. Supplementary material in Kelly et al. (2025) noted a considerable degree of within-country variation in responses to the WWQA survey, and this needs to be borne in mind when interpreting results of the present study. There would seem to be great potential in expanding the study to include a wider range of participants, a more rigorously stratified design and expanding beyond the focus on English speakers.

• Planning, delivering and analysing such a study is time consuming. Each interview lasted for about an hour (typically slightly less) but then automatic transcriptions needed to be checked and corrected before data analysis could start. Having more than one interviewer would be desirable, but ensuring consistency in the interviews will then become important. For this study, no data analysis software was used. These would have required an extra step to code the transcripts to enable the main themes to be identified, but may have streamlined analysis and interpretation.

These are consistent with broader methodological discussions in qualitative research, including issues of sample size, language bias, and researcher influence (Silverman, 2016; Reed, 2008).

Overall, however, this small “proof of concept” study does seem to indicate great potential for qualitative research in situations where understanding the interface between science and governance is necessary.

5 Conclusion

Broad support for the five hypotheses was demonstrated: the importance of the enabling environment, including a strong interface with the regulatory/legal system in the country was emphasised by all participants; several also were already using, or had plans to use, citizen science as a means of gathering bioassessment data. The importance of transboundary agreements was stressed. In some cases, physical boundaries were invoked; in others, multilateral agreements (including the European Union’s WFD and the UNEP’s SDGs) were mentioned. Finally, a general recognition of the need to communicate the benefits of bioassessment to higher officials and ministers was recognised.

Other key messages from this study, with relevance to ensuring effective implementation of bioassessment, especially where it is not necessarily used are:

• Think in terms of stepwise adoption, with a series of entry points that enables bioassessment to inform policy development and implementation at different scales, without overstretching the capacity of a country;

• Ensure that ecological ambition is expressed clearly in legislation and that directions specifying the form that any assessment required to measure progress towards this is developed in regulations;

• See what approaches neighbouring countries are using, rather than developing a method from scratch; diffusion and adaptation of a tried-and-tested method may be better than developing a “state-of-the-art” method from scratch;

• Consider the potential for “citizen science” as a means of boosting coverage of bioassessment within a region but also for engaging with stakeholders;

• Develop frameworks which allow bioassessment to usefully contribute to SDG Indicator 6.3.2 reporting;

• Persuading senior officials and ministers that bioassessment can contribute to meeting national aspirations for the aquatic environment is important. Arguments should focus on bioassessment as a cost-effective means of achieving objectives that they already recognise as important, and which chime with existing public concerns.

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