The Institutional Governance and Regulation SG contributes to the understanding and appreciation of the impact of different styles of institutional governance on the achievement of sustainable water use. There is a deep recognition of the need to develop IWA statements on high profile water issues covering all aspects of institutional governance and regulation.

The scope of the group is wide-ranging over such issues as:

•  Sustainable approaches to cost recovery
•  Tariff structures
•  Provisions for the poor
•  Approaches to integrated planning at all levels of government
•  Understanding of the impact of legal forms of water supply organizations on the achievement of integration
•  Principles of effective regulation in federal and civil code countries law context
•  Economics of water supply
•  Drinking water quality regulation models
•  Environmental water quality regulation
•  Water resources management
•  Climate change

These issues are important to our water future as promote management approaches and address complex challenges in the field of institutional governance and regulation, including growing demand for and a scarcity of freshwater. Producing knowledge and building bridges over country divides is one of the key development/hot topics that will be transformational in this field.