An Enhanced Water Governance Assessment Tool for Resilience and Sustainability: The InnWater Approach

This paper presents the development and pilot validation of an enhanced water governance assessment tool developed within the European InnWater project. Grounded in OECD Principles on Water Governance, the study combines literature review, thematic framework development, and pilot validation with stakeholders. The tool expands existing governance assessment frameworks by explicitly integrating four cross-cutting dimensions that are often insufficiently addressed: circular economy, environmental resilience, local empowerment, and procedural equity with particular attention to vulnerable groups. The assessment framework is organised across five governance domains—mega-trends and resilience; policy, institutions and regulation; financing; data, monitoring and evaluation; and engagement and accountability—and operationalised through a structured questionnaire applied in selected European pilot sites. Insights from initial pilot applications illustrate the tool’s capacity to reveal institutional coordination gaps, capacity constraints, and barriers to inclusive and adaptive governance. The paper contributes a replicable, policy-relevant governance assessment methodology designed to support reflexive learning and institutional improvement in diverse European water governance contexts.