Assessment of water governance in the West Bank, Palestine

Water governance deals with the steering, organisation and guidance of water resources management. Alongside encouraging technical solutions, effective water governance addresses organisational, legal, financial, socioeconomic and political issues. This paper applies governance matrix, which was tailored to the local context of Palestine. Setting of the matrix dimensions and related evaluation criteria, the questions and indicators were identified based on sectorial gaps using authors' knowledge and experiences in the sector and the review of available documents and reports. The matrix includes 13 dimensions: levels and scales, actors and networks, organisations and organisational capacity, problem perspectives and goal ambitions, water quality, strategies and instruments, rules enforcement, responsibilities and resources, technology systems, funding, infrastructure, political status, and social status. Findings indicate that the two most supportive dimensions, or the least in need of improvement, were water quality and responsibilities and resources, and the two most restrictive dimensions were political status and social status.