Please refer to the attached file. Assessments of water infrastructure in climate adaptation and recovery programs often focus on the physical assets — wells, irrigation channels, storage structures and distribution networks. The local institutions that co-determine whether that infrastructure continues to function are recorded less consistently. These are the rules setting who takes water and when, the obligations that keep channels and wells in working order, the authorities whose decisions are accepted, and the forums that settle disputes before they harden. The Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment carried out after Storm Daniel in eastern Libya in 2023, for instance, assessed the floods’ effects on physical assets, economic losses, and recovery and reconstruction needs across affected sectors. For water and sanitation, it estimated US$136 million in physical damage and US$234 million in reconstruction and recovery needs (around 13 per cent of total needs). Those estimates are necessary for recovery planning, but they do not by themselves establish whether the institutional arrangements needed to operate rebuilt systems remain functional. This research brief argues that how water infrastructure performs depends on the local institutions through which water is allocated, maintained and contested, and that infrastructure investment can itself change how those institutions work by altering the physical conditions under which their rules operate. The brief sets out what these institutions do, how new works change the outcomes their rules produce, what happens when the institutions weaken or lack the capacity to act, and what infrastructure and recovery assessment teams could reasonably document alongside the physical asset.
World: Local Water Institutions and Infrastructure Performance: Allocation, Maintenance, and Control (September 2026)
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