Water Governance Programme

The 'water crisis' is largely a governance crisis

There is enough water on Earth for all, even in areas where temporary shortages may exist. Managing water for all is not only a question of hydrology and money, but equally a matter of good governance.

In the absence of effective public governance to manage interdependencies across policy areas and between levels of government, policymakers inevitably face obstacles to effectively designing and implementing water reforms.

Water is essentially a local issue and involves a plethora of stakeholders at basin, municipal, regional, national and international levels.

Improving water governance: Towards a community of leaders

The goal of this meeting (October 2011) was to create and consolidate a community of leaders for and beyond The World Water Forum (WWF), which will be held in Marseilles in 2012. These leaders will foster good governance in the water sector and monitor the implementation of the targets designed as part of the 6th WWF preparatory process.

 Documents from the meeting 

• Agenda
• Key Messages
• Summary Record
• List of Participants

Key governance challenges in the water sector

Key challenges are institutional and territorial fragmentation and badly managed multi-level governance, but also limited capacity at the local level, unclear allocation of roles and responsibilities and questionable resource allocation.

As the 2009 OECD report Managing Water For All stated, patchy financial management and the lack of long-term strategic planning are also to blame, together with poor economic regulation and poorly drafted legislation.

Insufficient means for measuring performance have also contributed to weak accountability and transparency. These obstacles are often rooted in misaligned objectives and poor management of interactions between stakeholders.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer or magic blueprint to respond to governance challenges in the water sector, but rather a plea for home-grown and place-based policies integrating territorial specificities and concerns. The institutions in charge of water management are at different developmental stages in different countries, but common challenges – including in the most developed countries - can be diagnosed ex ante to provide adequate policy responses.

To do so, there is a pressing need to take stock of recent experiences, identify good practices and develop pragmatic tools across different levels of government and other stakeholders in engaging shared, effective, fair and sustainable water policies.

Programme objectives

Launch of the report

Background of the report 

This report addresses multi-level governance challenges in water policy implementation and identifies good practices for coordinating water policy across ministries, between levels of government, and across local actors at sub-national level.

Based on the OECD Multi-level Governance Methodological Framework,  it identifies the main governance “gaps” from a policy, administrative, information, accountability, funding ,objective and capacity perspective, and analyses the governance instruments adopted in response.

Data collected from an extensive survey on water governance provide institutional mapping of roles and responsibilities in water policy-making at national/sub-national level in 17 OECD countries. The report concludes on preliminary guidelines for effective management of multi-level governance in water policy.

Forthcoming work

Publications & related areas of work

Further information