The first meeting of the OECD Water Governance Initiative took place in Paris on the 27 & 28 March 2013. 

The meeting provided a multi-stakeholder network and policy forum to share ongoing reforms and good practices towards achieving agreed water governance targets.

Meeting documents

Agenda
List of participants
Scoping note
PowerPoint presentation
Key messages & decisions (English / French)

Some of the main challenges to good water governance include:

•  Institutional fragmentation
•  Poorly managed multi-level governance
•  Limited capacity at local level
•  Unclear allocation of roles and responsibilities
•  Lack of integrity and transparency
•  Resource allocation difficulties
•  Poor financial management
•  Lack of long-term financial planning
•  Poor economic regulation
•  Poorly drafted legislation       

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The report provides evidence-based assessment and policy recommendations in support of Mexico’s water reform. It analyses implementation bottlenecks and identifies good practices in four key areas considered as essential drivers for change in the water sector of Mexico: multi-level and river basin governance; economic efficiency and financial sustainability; and regulatory functions for water supply and sanitation. The report highlights many positive achievements. Mexico has a well-developed policy framework for water resource management with a number of institutions and policy instruments in place. But much remains to be done for effective, sustainable and integrated water policy. The report emphasises that policy implementation is uneven, river basin councils are not fully operational twenty years after their creation, the regulatory framework for drinking water and sanitation is scattered across multiple actors, and harmful subsidies in other sectors (energy, agriculture) clearly work against water policy objectives. Efforts are particularly needed to increase water productivity and the cost efficiency of water policies, address multi-level and river basin governance challenges (in particular to bridge inconsistencies between federal and basin priorities), sequence and prioritise reform needs, and support greater policy coherence with agriculture and energy.

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The report calls for more integrated water policies and governance mechanisms that are context-specific, flexible and beneficial to the poor.

It provides, for 13 LAC countries, an institutional mapping of the allocation of water policy roles and responsibilities. The report then evaluates the importance of 7 multi-level governance gaps : mismatch between administrative and hydrological boundaries, lack of capacity at sub-national level, information asymmetry, diverging objectives between policy areas, under-financing, sectoral fragmentation across ministries and public agencies, and poor accountability.

The report also highlights good practices for vertical and horizontal coordination of water policy, and suggests guidelines to better manage interdependencies across public actors within and outside the water box.

LAC countries covered include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru.

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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 with preliminary guidelines for effective management of multi-level governance in water policy.

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