Institutional fit in the water sector

Adequate water governance is necessary for the world’s sustainability. Because of its importance, a growing literature has studied ways to improve water governance, beginning in the early 2000s. Institutions, which refer to the set of shared rules, codes, and prescriptions that regulate human actions, are a particularly important element of sustainable water governance. Evidence shows that to design institutions that will generate sustainable economic, ecological, and cultural development, it is necessary to consider ecosystems and socioeconomic-cultural systems as social-ecological systems (SESs). In the past, practitioners and international agencies tried to find the government-led panaceas, but this search has been largely unsuccessful. Current views support efforts to move towards addressing complexity (e.g., Integrated Water Resources Management), and search for the fit between the institutional arrangements and SESs’ attributes.