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Through the lens of the 12 OECD Principles on Water Governance, this paper examines six water resources and water services frameworks in Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa and South America to understand enhancing and constraining contextual factors. We use qualitative and quantitative methods to analyse each framework against four criteria: alignment; implementation; on-ground results; and policy impact. We identify four main target areas for improving water governance: policy coherence; financing; managing trade-offs; and ensuring integrity and transparency by all decisionmakers and stakeholders. We present suggestions to support practical implementation of the principles through better governmental action and stakeholder involvement.

The project CARE-W presented in this paper deals with the public water supply networks and their problems of ageing such as structural failures, hydraulic insufficiencies, leakage, deteriorating water quality and increasing maintenance cost that impact on an urban environment. The ultimate goal of the project is to develop a suite of tools, which provide the most cost-efficient system of maintenance and repair of water distribution networks, with the aim to guarantee a security of water supply that meets social, health, economic and environmental requirements. The paper comprises a description of the project work-packages, which include: a control panel of Performance Indicators (PIs) for rehabilitation;a description of technical and statistical tools assessing and forecasting some of the PI;a procedure to define the best choice for annual rehabilitation programming;a procedure to define the best strategy of planning rehabilitation investments (at long term, 10 to 20 years);a software, combining the above products with a common database, tested and evaluated by several test cities. CARE-W is aimed at utilities for water supply systems, operating companies, local authorities, financial institutions and national regulators. It is supported by the European Commission under the fifth framework programme.

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