Task 1 - Water Governance Benchmark Framework

The framework developed under this task will describe the legal, policy, regulatory, and institutional elements that together make up the context of water resource development and management in any particular country. Developing a sound framework is crucial to the successful implementation of the remainder of the project, since it will guide the choice of the specific factors to be benchmarked, the subsequent selection of indicators for these factors, and the design of systems used to assess progress over time and to compare progress against baseline values. Our focus will be primarily on governance arrangements, though the performance of certain service delivery sub-sectors such as domestic water supply will also be included.

The IRG team members will build a common, flexible analytical framework by combining methodological elements of three well-proven approaches to water institutional mapping and analysis. They are the Institutional Decomposition and Analysis Framework developed by Saleth and Dinar in The Institutional Economics of Water (published in 2004 by Edward Elgar for the World Bank), the Function and Institution Matrix introduced by Svendsen in his book, River Basin Management (published by CABI for IWMI in 2005), and the Water Institutional Health Index developed and applied by Dinar and Saleth in their 2005 paper that appeared in the Journal of Water Science and Technology. These three approaches provide valuable building blocks for a common methodological framework. We will combine elements of each with standard monitoring and evaluation concepts to identify objectives and indicators for governance parameters and establish baseline values for the indicators.

The team will consider a wide range of legal, policy, and institutional factors when designing the analytical framework. Selected examples of factors that might be indexed in this process include systems of water rights, legal basis for integrated water resource management, legal scope for farmer and other private sector participation in water management, linkages between water policies and policies in other sectors such as agriculture and environment, and accountability mechanisms for water-related service provision.

Our approach to framework development will start with participatory brainstorming sessions that involve a broad spectrum of key stakeholders and experts. These sessions will enable the team to elicit useful ideas, generate awareness of and buy-in to the activities, and learn more about what others are doing in the area so we can avoid duplicating efforts. We anticipate that other donors will be highly interested in this work, we will hold an early seminar in Washington DC that involves key individuals from USAID, the World Bank, and other important stakeholders. The World Bank has supported related work in the past and has expressed concern about the growing problem of water scarcity in the Middle East (see its 2007 report, Making the Most of Scarcity: Accountability for Better Water Management Results in the Middle East and North Africa).

We will also conduct initial in-region consultations with organizations such as the EU and GTZ, which have been working on water issues in the Middle East and North Africa. The EU-supported Water Demand Management Knowledge Base in the Mediterranean (Wadamed) project, for example, generated potentially instructive materials on management strategies and institutional arrangements. The just-concluded German Government-supported regional workshop in Marrakech (organized by InWent) addressed many water governance issues of concern in the context of ReWaB (and was attended by representatives of most of the focal ReWaB countries). The IRG team will involve in these consultations the European Mediterranean Information System on Know-how in the Water Sector (EMWIS), which is working with Middle Eastern and EU country organizations providing technical and budgetary support for regional web-based information sharing. Finally, we will consult with the International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities (IBNET) and with particular countries in the Middle East and North Africa that have made impressive progress in aspects of water resources management. For example, Tunisia has done well in managing water utilities; Morocco has made impressive strides in river basin management, integrating important social and economic factors; and Jordan has designed interactive tools for master planning.

The specific activities are:

1. Brainstorming workshop (1/2 day) in Washington DC with World Bank, USAID, key personnel, and IRG
2. Team building in Washington DC with IRG and partner organizations
3. Key personnel mobilized to MENA
4. Initial meeting with USAID to discuss procedures, relationships, and reporting
5. Consultations with USAID, other donors, interested stakeholders, and MENA-based partners (including AWC & ACWUA) on methodology, country selection, resources in focal countries, responsibilities, timeline, and preparation of draft work plan
6. Approval of work plan by USAID
7. Initial team visits to MENA countries of interest to establish contacts, gauge interest and experience with benchmarking in water sector, and establish contact with additional country-based organizations
8. Determine five focal countries in consultation with USAID
9. Contract(s) with additional focal country-based organizations
10. Draft, distribute, and solicit initial country stakeholder feedback of framework paper
11. Facilitated conference to review framework paper
12. Finalize framework paper