Appropriate institutional, policy, legal and regulatory frameworks are essential, country-specific elements of a national water sector strategy that aims to reduce poverty and increase wealth.

WMC offers the wide range of skills and experience necessary to assess and identify how institutional, policy, legal and regulatory frameworks can be improved. Our approach focuses on working together with government policy makers so that they build their capacity to reform institutional frameworks and facilitate an enabling environment that leads to improved service provision and decision making in the sector.

Project Examples:

Title:	Regulatory framework for integrated groundwater management and pollution control
Location:	The Bahamas
Client:	Water and Sewerage Corporation
Funding:	Inter-American Development Bank
Description:	Funded by the Inter-American Development Bank, WMC was commissioned to design a complete legal and institutional framework for the management of groundwater resources and pollution control on a national scale, appropriate for the Bahamian legal, institutional, social and economic context. The project included extensive stakeholder consultation, largely through face-to-face meetings with key people, at all levels, ranging from senior Government officials to representatives of the poorest communities. The technical approach taken was to identify threats to water resources, in both quantity and quality, and then design legal and planning instruments to deal with each threat. Legal, technical and administrative guidelines for mechanisms to ensure efficient allocation of water, monitoring and enforcement, and an implementation strategy, were provided. The innovative approach was presented at an international conference of the Caribbean Water & Wastewater Association.

Title:	Small-scale private sector participation in the rural water supply sector
Location:	Ghana , Tanzania and Zambia
Client:	Governments of Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia
Funding:	Department for International Development, UK
Description:	Working together with the Governments of Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia, WMC conceived, developed and managed this action-research study to strengthen the capacity of the governments to lead the process of sector reform in respect of small-scale private sector participation in providing rural water services. Teams from the three governments and WaterAid addressed legal, institutional and financial aspects of the enabling environment for the small-scale private sector. Best practice guidelines were produced towards the end of 2005 that aim to enhance rural-based private sector participation in the provision of rural water supply services in Africa and elsewhere. www.ruralwaterpsp.org