This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue The Challenges of Water Management and Governance in Cities that was published in Water

Access to water is one of the most pressing global issues of the twenty-first century, particularly when set against the background of a rapidly growing global population. This book provides a cutting-edge, comprehensive overview of the challenges facing water governance and regulatory choices. The recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals set forward an ambitious agenda of providing universal access to good quality water supply and sanitation services within a financially constrained environment: however, the various peculiarities of each country regarding water governance makes it difficult to identify and implement the best practices and benchmarks. Drawing together empirical studies from countries around the world, the editors and contributors combine extensive data to review the individual challenges facing each country, from the supervision of autonomous regulatory bodies to the question of centralization and the influence of local utility companies. This pioneering and practical volume will be of interest and value not only to students and scholars of water governance, but also to practitioners and regulators.

The litany of alarming observations about water use and misuse is now familiar—over a billion people without access to safe drinking water; almost every major river dammed and diverted; increasing conflicts over the delivery of water in urban areas; continuing threats to water quality from agricultural inputs and industrial wastes; and the increasing variability of climate, including threats of severe droughts and flooding across locales and regions. These issues present tremendous challenges for water governance. This book focuses on three major concepts and approaches that have gained currency in policy and governance circles, both globally and regionally—scarcity and crisis, marketization and privatization, and participation. It provides a historical and contextual overview of each of these ideas as they have emerged in global and regional policy and governance circles and pairs these with in-depth case studies that examine manifestations and contestations of water governance internationally. The book interrogates ideas of water crisis and scarcity in the context of bio-physical, political, social and environmental landscapes to better understand how ideas and practices linked to scarcity and crisis take hold, and become entrenched in policy and practice. The book also investigates ideas of marketization and privatization, increasingly prominent features of water governance throughout the global South, with particular attention to the varied implementation and effects of these governance practices. The final section of the volume analyzes participatory water governance, querying the disconnects between global discourses and local realities, particularly as they intersect with the other themes of interest to the volume. Promoting a view of changing water governance that links across these themes and in relation to contemporary realities, the book is invaluable for students, researchers, advocates, and policy makers interested in water governance challenges facing the developing world.

ÔEnsuring that everybody has access to drinking water, sanitation and enough nutritious food, which depends on water to grow it, are prerequisites for a healthy life. Water management is not just about the technical aspects of water supply and sanitation. It is equally about our water governance systems, including policies, regulation and societal perception of water rights. This book presents many helpful examples of how different societies are dealing with these issues and of the performance of public and private sector players in this important arena.Õ Ð Colin Chartres, International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Colombo, Sri Lanka ÔI congratulate the Institute of Water Policy, the two editors and the contributors for a very thoughtful book on urban water governance. Our objective is to deliver sustainable water and sanitation services to our people. This book contains useful lessons on how to achieve that objective.Õ Ð Tommy Koh, Chairman, Governing Council, Asia-Pacific Water Forum This insightful book explores urban water governance challenges in different parts of the world and highlights the advantages and disadvantages of publicly run, privatized, and publicÐprivate partnership managed water facilities. The contributors expertly discuss various types of public and private water governance architectures as well as identifying the trends, challenges, opportunities and the shifts in perceptions with regard to the provision of water supply services. Many chapters are dedicated to analyzing the urban water supply scenarios in selected countries, with specific focus on legal, policy and institutional frameworks. The study reveals that while private sector participation has been largely promoted by multilateral institutions as part of institutional and financial reforms, ultimately governments bear the major responsibility for provision of water supply services either as Ôservice providerÕ or as Ôregulator and policy-makerÕ. Containing a detailed overview and analysis of the global urban water supply sector, this timely compendium will strongly appeal to academics, researchers and university students following water-related courses. Water sector professionals, water regulators and public officers as well as managers and researchers employed by private sector water operators will also find plenty of invaluable information in this important book.

This book presents a historically situated explanation of the rise of global water governance and the contemporary challenges that global water governance seeks to address. It is particularly concerned with connecting what are often technical issues in water management with the social and political structures that affect how technical and scientific advice affects decisions. Schmidt and Matthews are careful to avoid the pitfalls of setting up opposing binaries, such as ‘nature versus culture’ or ‘private versus public’, thereby allowing readers to understand how contests over water governance have been shaped over time and why they will continue to be so. Co-written by an academic and a practitioner, Global Challenges in Water Governance combines the dual concerns for both analytical clarity and practical applicability in a way that is particularly valuable both for educators, researchers, decision-makers, and newcomers to the complexities of water use decisions.

Water Governance in OECD Countries: A Multilevel Approach addresses multilevel 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 subnational level. Based on a methodological framework, it assesses the main “coordination gaps” in terms of policy-making, financing, information, accountability, objectives and capacity building, and provides a platform of existing governance mechanisms to bridge them. Based on an extensive survey on water governance the report provides a comprehensive institutional mapping of roles and responsibilities in water policy-making at national/subnational level in 17 OECD countries. It concludes on preliminary multilevel governance guidelines for integrated water policy.