The approach, however, is based on the recovery of incurred costs (all or part of them), and does not focus of w'ater charges as a method to raise revenue, The implementation of water charges would help to tackle future water challenges such as an economic crisis or fiscal consolidation efforts that generate severe restrictions on public expenditure, and climate change related impacts, i.e. maintain water infrastructure efficiency and adapt water supply system to potentially decreasing bulk water resources. In other words, it is desirable to move towards a pricing scheme that is able to consider medium- and long-term objectives for enhancing water security and resilience, placing emphasis on long-term sustainable water availability levels, rather than on consumption levels. This framework law was complemented and detailed by the Decree-Law No. The Polluter-Pays principle and the Beneficiary-Pays principle were established for the first time in the 1987 Framework Law for the Environment, but remained merely “ink in the paper”. Six years later, in 1993, an attempt to approve the necessary regulations and implementation procedures failed to a large extent because of the resistance of the agriculture sector.