Regulatory bodies and enforcement agencies monitor and enforce rules and regulations, thus ensuring proper practice and implementation. They play an instrumental role in governing water and environmental resources management. Their functions and mandates are set by policies and legal instruments. This tool describes the regulatory function, presents the different types of regulatory entities, their key roles in water management, and highlights considerations to enhance the capacity of regulatory and enforcement bodies.
Regulatory bodies and enforcement agencies have an important role to ensure that IWRM principles are adequately translated into practice. They ensure that the standards stipulated in policies (Tools A1), legal frameworks (Tools A2) or plans (Tools A3) are being respected by all actors (Hannam, 2003). The enforcement functions may include responsibilities to identify offences, build capacity, report, resolve conflict, conduct monitoring, gather evidence, take remedial actions, and initiate proceedings. A range of regulations can be executed through these bodies such as tariff regulations, water or wastewater quality regulations, service delivery regulations, licensing regulations, and efficiency regulations (WAREG, 2015). In some cases, regulatory bodies may have the power to subcontract specific activities related to water management to specialised organisations, including private companies.
The goal for these bodies and agencies is to ensure accountability and transparency in decision making processes (Tool B1.05). It also ensures that the system functions as envisioned while also building trust in the system for all stakeholders. Their responsibilities are often associated with water supply (Tools B2) or irrigation management and utilise a wide range of management instruments (Tools C) to ensure efficiency, alignment, quality of service and protection of customers. The role of regulators to oversee interactions between policy makers, communities, users, and service providers (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Role of regulators in context of different stakeholders (Adapted from Water Governance Facility, 2021)