Regulation of urban stormwater management is not a matter of choice, but performance

Abstract

Abstract Public services regulation is not a new subject and neither is its application to urban water services. Regulation is part of the set of instruments available for running public policies but does not occur alone, i.e., without institutions, the rules governing interactions between actors. However, when it comes to stormwater management, regulation is not always present, either in a soft form, through best practice guides, or in harder forms, such as command-and-control mechanisms. Literature and practice show that their absence hinders the desired provision of stormwater services. This paper seeks to present and discuss aspects related to the subject of regulation focusing not only on the need for regulation but also on the alignment between policies, institutions, and regulation (PIR) around the goal of achieving performance in delivery services. The objective and novelty of the reflections presented here consist in contributing to creating a new mentality on the need for this alignment. Aligning regulation issues within the PIR context creates opportunities to save resources and to bring better performance. This is not few and nor a matter of choice, but of the need to improve performance to face urban demographic increase, aging and obsolescence of infrastructure, and climate change challenges.