The report assesses current governance strategies and institutional set-ups to deal with water-related risks in the EU using the lens of the WEFE nexus. Furthermore, it identifies several opportunities that may facilitate a shift towards increased coordination in water-related governance. These opportunities are organized into seven categories: new priorities, new policies, new concepts, new tools, new roles and tasks, new cooperations, and new sources of funding. The report is accompanied by a series of factsheets for all 27 EU Member States.

One of the RETOUCH NEXUS project objectives is to provide a collection of existing and new indicators for monitoring water governance building on the existing OECD water governance indicator framework. RETOUCH NEXUS aims to use the multi-level and cross-sectoral nature of the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems (WEFE) Nexus to propose a list of indicators that allow assessing water governance over different spatial and temporal scales. First, across temporal scales, an intervention may have impacts over the short, medium and long term. Second, across a spatial scale, an intervention may deliver downward cascading impacts from its implementation at a larger scale (top-down impacts) or upward impacts resulting from up-scaling local practices (bottom-up impacts).

This document outlines Task 1.4 of the RETOUCH NEXUS Project, focusing on developing a data and monitoring framework for water governance. Building on previous work (Task 1.3), it refines a set of indicators and proposes a monitoring framework that incorporates the OECD water governance indicators while adding metrics to assess policy outcomes and the Water, Energy, Food, and Ecosystems (WEFE) Nexus. The framework guides decision-making in water allocation and management by identifying relevant indicators and publicly available data sources, with strategies for both quantitative and qualitative assessment. The report concludes that while national-level water governance can be effectively monitored using available data, challenges exist at local scales due to data limitations. The indicators will be applied in six case studies under RETOUCH NEXUS to address these gaps.

These factsheets serve as informative resources for the RETOUCH NEXUS case studies, highlighting a collection of effective practices and innovative approaches derived from ongoing initiatives in Europe and elsewhere. The factsheets include eight engagement mechanisms capturing a total of 40 good practices and innovative approaches. adelphi reviewed various engagmeent mechanisms with examples to develop the fact sheets. One of the case studies inlcuded is Living Labs from GOVAQUA , which is a sister project of RETOUCH NEXUS un EU Horizon funds.

The Stakeholder Engagement Roadmap (SER) guides the RETOUCH NEXUS project in addressing water, energy, food, and ecosystem (WEFE) challenges. It promotes integrated, sustainable governance through innovative engagement mechanisms, inclusivity for vulnerable groups, open science practices, and ethical data management. The GTI app facilitates knowledge sharing and stakeholder involvement, adapting as needed during implementation.

This report describes the process of  the creation of the dashboard for task T4.1 in the RETOUCH NEXUS project and it presents the most recent versions of the screens of the dashboard (their design may be still subject to change). Each dashboard screen is devoted to one partial aspect of water governance. In this report, also an accompanying description of the main findings for the RETOUCH NEXUS case
studies is given.

This report assesses water governance fragmentation in six RETOUCH NEXUS countries, examining the lack of coherence across governmental levels and sectors like water, energy, food, and ecosystems. It highlights various initiatives aimed at improving coordination, resulting in new governance concepts and tools for better management. Despite progress, the report identifies areas needing improvement, including local-level coordination, stakeholder involvement, capacity building, and fostering experimentation spaces.