Unpacking Water Governance: A Framework for Practitioners
Stockholm International Water Institute, 10055 Stockholm, Sweden
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These authors contributed equally to this work.
Water 2020, 12(3), 827; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12030827
Received: 25 November 2019
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Revised: 3 March 2020
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Accepted: 11 March 2020
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Published: 15 March 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from 2019 World Water Week)
Water governance has emerged as an important topic in the international arena and is acknowledged to be a crucial factor for adequate and sustained progress towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6. However, there is not enough clarity about the practical meaning of the term “water governance” and how to work with it. This paper reviews the term’s use, to reveal how the concept is understood, referred to, and implemented in practice by different stakeholders. Based on literature review and consultations with experts, we identify and describe the core components of water governance (functions), describe their potential qualities when performed (attributes), and how they interrelate with the values and aspirations of the different stakeholders to achieve certain outcomes. These different components are described in detail to construct an operational framework to assess and work with water governance, which covers water and sanitation services delivery, water resources management and transboundary waters. This paper’s findings provide practical guidance for decision makers and practitioners on how action-oriented water governance processes can be meaningfully designed, and ultimately, how to strengthen efforts aiming to improve water governance.
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Keywords:
water governance; good governance; adaptive governance; SDG 6; human rights to water and sanitation
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MDPI and ACS Style
Jiménez, A.; Saikia, P.; Giné, R.; Avello, P.; Leten, J.; Liss Lymer, B.; Schneider, K.; Ward, R. Unpacking Water Governance: A Framework for Practitioners. Water 2020, 12, 827. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12030827
AMA Style
Jiménez A, Saikia P, Giné R, Avello P, Leten J, Liss Lymer B, Schneider K, Ward R. Unpacking Water Governance: A Framework for Practitioners. Water. 2020; 12(3):827. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12030827
Chicago/Turabian StyleJiménez, Alejandro, Panchali Saikia, Ricard Giné, Pilar Avello, James Leten, Birgitta Liss Lymer, Kerry Schneider, and Robin Ward. 2020. "Unpacking Water Governance: A Framework for Practitioners" Water 12, no. 3: 827. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12030827
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