The setting-up and development of "Associated Programs" aim at providing and coordinating assistance in the field.

More and more people in charge, especially the GWP Regional Technical Advisory Committees (RTAC), think that integrated water resources management should be organized on the appropriate scale of river basins.

INBO aims at promoting integrated water resources management at the level of river basins as an essential tool for sustainable development. For this purpose, INBO endeavors:

• to develop lasting relations between the organizations in charge of such a comprehensive management and facilitate exchanges of experience and expertise among them;
• to facilitate the development of tools suited for institutional and financial management, knowledge and monitoring of water resources and uses, organization of databases, concerted elaboration of medium and long-term masterplans and action programs;
• to organize information and training programs for representatives of decentralized governmental administrations, State (in Federations) and local authorities, for representatives of users and different stakeholders involved in water management as well as for the executives and staff of organizations in charge of river basin management;
• to evaluate actions undertaken by Member-organizations and disseminate their results;
• to encourage education of the population on these issues;
• to promote these principles in international cooperation programs.

The General Assembly of the International Network of Basin Organizations (INBO) held in Salvador de Bahia, December 1998, decided to devote more efforts in sharing the experience of INBO Members.

Contacts have therefore been established with a number of partners, including the European Union, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Organization of American States, the Global Water Partnership, bilateral French, Dutch, Spanish or German cooperation, etc.

INBO is a member of GWP. Mr. R. Garrido, the Network's President and Federal Secretary for Water Resources in Brazil, was elected member of the "Partnership" Management Committee.

Several other INBO members-organizations and its Secretariat (IOWater) are also GWP Members.

Following the International Conference on Water and Sustainable Development, held in Paris in 1998, the Government of the Netherlands organized the second World Water Forum and a ministerial level conference on water in The Hague in March 2000. As part of the preparatory process for this conference, a number of initiatives relating to the management of river basins were discussed. In particular, the Government of the Netherlands explored options for launching a "twinning program" between river basin organizations and sponsored an expert meeting to discuss possible guidelines for river basin management, organized by RBA (Delft).

Among various solutions for integrated water resources management, a River Basin Organization appears widely as one of the best.

River basins are the catchment areas of rivers and large lakes, including their related aquifers, grouping the sub-basins of their various tributaries.

These river basins should, however have a geographic area, population growth and economic activities large enough to become a real district for integrated water management with sufficient financial resources.

With regard to the very large transboundary rivers, such an integrated management may be organized in a coordinated and consistent manner, on the scale of each of their main tributaries, which sometimes are also transboundary themselves.

Historically, river organizations appeared in one or other place of the world with varied legal forms according to local specific and most often sectoral issues to address either irrigation, flood mitigation and management of large infrastructures, or navigation, or hydropower generation, and more recently urban and industrial water supply or river and groundwater pollution control.

There are many kinds of River Basin Organizations, which either have been in existence for decades, or are being set up or planned in some countries or regions over the world.

Their legal statutes and economic systems are various.

Not one of these examples can be considered as a pattern and each country has to design its own organization. But due to years of practice and experience, some principles have been widely acknowledged (see recommendations and guidelines on sustainable river basin management, RBA-DELFT, The Hague 29 October 1999, and conclusions of INBO or LANBO General Assemblies):

• autonomy, & enterprise,
• transparency, & accountability,
• equity & stakeholder participation
• anticipation & large information.

The issues thus raised are numerous and complex.

The solutions brought must allow for :

• protection against natural disasters and risks of erosion, floods or drought, taking into account space and water management,

• reliably fulfilling the urban and rural populations' requirements in terms of good quality drinking water, in order to improve hygiene and health and to prevent important outbreaks of disease,

• agricultural land reclamation and developing appropriate irrigation systems to produce enough agricultural food,

• harmoniously developing industry, energy production, recreational activities and, in some areas, tourism and waterways navigation,

• preventing and controlling pollution of all kinds and origins, in order to preserve aquatic ecosystems and more especially, to protect fauna and optimize fish farming for human consumption, while meeting the requirements of various uses and more generally, preserving the biodiversity of the aquatic environment.

It is recommended that agreements and strategies, programs, financing and monitoring be designed at the river basin level and that cooperation agreements be formalized between riparian countries regarding large shared rivers, lakes and seas.

In addition, many rivers and aquifers are shared by several riparian countries.

Joint management of transboundary rivers, international lakes and aquifers is already dealt with in international conventions, among which we can mention:

• The United Nations Convention on uses other than Navigation on International Watercourses,
• Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes in Europe, Helsinki (March 1992),
• The European Union's Council Directive for establishing a framework for Community action in the field of water policy,
• and many conventions or agreements between riparian countries for specific management of shared rivers, especially among European and American countries, but also for some African and Asian rivers.

These examples should be widely disseminated as they are a specific component from which the actions planned in this Associated Program derive.

As a preamble to INBO’s Charter of organization, the network is open to organizations managing national or federal, or even transboundary river basins and the cooperation structures they have developed among them.

The term "Basin Organizations" implies public organizations with legal existence, or pending creation according to the legislation in force in their country, having statutes and their own budget.

The governmental administrations in charge of water management in a country can join INBO as soon as they are willing to apply an integrated water resources management policy :

• organization through large hydrographic units (River Basins),
• associating governmental and state administrations (in Federations) and local authorities, as well as users from the various sectors,
• and having specific budgetary resources at its disposal, obtained by applying the "users-pay" and "polluters-pay" principles.

In the following, a River Basin Organization is defined in a broad sense, and includes all kinds of organizations as long as they respect the broad definition retained by INBO and in the World Water Forum topic " WATER IN RIVERS ": " Agencies, or coordinating bodies, which are responsible to all stakeholders within the large hydrographic river basin and which are adequately financed so that they can achieve their remit. This remit should include balancing the aspirations of all stakeholders and will include responsibility for flood mitigation, water resources, environmental conservation, public health (water quality), navigation, amenity etc. These agencies, or coordinating bodies, should promote a general understanding of all the issues and should encourage dialogue and participation. ".

On proposal of member organizations and permanent observers belonging to the same geographic region, "Regional Networks" can be created within INBO in order to:

• develop joint activities of INBO in the region,
• organize joint activities of regional interest.

All activities carried out by the regional networks should be in conformity with INBO objective, consistent with its general program, implemented in partnership with INBO members in other geographic regions.

INBO assists the regional networks according to its means and their requirements; favor exchanges of information and experience between the regional networks.

The meetings of INBO Bureau and General Assembly are organized, whenever possible, in the same location and at the same date as those of the regional networks to facilitate exchanges.

The " Developing & Strengthening River Basin Organizations " Associated Program (RBO-AP) is addressing not only existing River Basin Organizations, but also future organizations, or beginners.

In that field, evolving regional initiatives such as those registered in various Regional Technical Advisory Committees (RTAC) of GWP are to be taken into close consideration. The same applies to the setting-up in Latin America in 1997 of the Latin-American Network of Basin Organizations (LANBO), following INBO General Assembly in Morelia (Mexico) and its Constitutive Meeting in Brasilia (Brazil). Its organization and objectives within INBO were defined by the General Assemblies in Bogota (Colombia, August 1998) and Mendoza (Argentina, August 1999).

In relation to the set of objectives stated above, 4 main initial outputs are expected :

For example, the strategic assistance mobilized in output 2 will be supported by the knowledge base developed for output 3 and disseminated by the documentation system organized for Output 4. Outputs 2, 3 and 4 can obviously be enhanced in the context of output 1 to enrich direct cooperation between basin organizations.

This Associated Program was initiated and will be developed in close collaboration with other initiatives launched under the aegis of the GWP.

Outputs 3 and 4 are seen as contributing to the GWP Associated Program aiming at setting up an Information System on "integrated water resources management" with a "knowledge of basin organizations" perspective. The program will also develop strong linkages with the efforts undertaken in the area of institutional capacity building for integrated water resources management (IWRM) through the UNDP "CAPNET" project.

In addition, all GWP initiatives benefit from close interaction with regional groups (RTACs and forthcoming Regional Water Partnerships), which is meant to ensure broad adequacy between services provided through APs and real needs in the field. The Program will develop into a dialogue with these GWP regional groups on the basin organization issues in each region.

Due to its comprehensive involvement in public-private partnership and participatory management, the International Secretariat for Water (ISW), an international non-governmental organization (NGO), is responsible for the development of the social aspect of water management to the International Network of Basin Organizations since Salvador de Bahia general assembly in 1998.

Social engineering is more and more a prerequisite for all reform in the water field. ISW proposal brings 3 added values to the overall program:

1. It helps river basin organizations staff to work better with civil society by identifying/fostering local leadership, by understanding issues of representation and legitimacy of civil society groups speaking on behalf of users.
2. This proposal is to design practical and operational tools for citizen and user partnership and participation. These tools will be the support of professional training for basin organization officials and responsible persons of staff, board of directors and water committees.
3. It provides awareness raising and education of users and citizens to the concepts of integrated water management, particularly the need to conserve and recycle water resources, and develop positive behaviour to water management.

A brief description of the 4 expected main outputs is given hereafter, including the set of services proposed in order to achieve them and the identification of the officers-in-charge best suited to assume their coordination and follow-up.

By allowing the direct sharing of good and bad experiences, twinning service can help the involved river basin organizations in enhancing their management efficiency through improved technical, scientific and institutional expertise. The twinning concept is based on the proven rationale that some river basin organizations can benefit from administrative, technical and/or institutional advice -from a professional point of view- provided by a counterpart organization managing a basin in another geographical, political or economical context. This need is particularly felt by river basin organizations which have only been operational for a few years. It can also benefit to organizations with wide experience.

Owing to many examples, twinning is at first a mere friendly relationship between different political representatives and administrative executives, members of river basin committees, managers or experts from basin organizations whose purposes and experiences in river basin management are more or less identical. This kind of informal agreement appears to be fruitful and sustains exchanges (INBO is already the facilitator of such relations).

But two organizations may need develop a slightly more structured cooperation mode based on a formal agreement with official provisions for information exchanges and lasting relations. The main components of direct cooperation may be :

• capacity building,
• development of appropriate legal frameworks and policy,

• medium and long-term planning,
• economic approach, taxation, investment plans,
• knowledge of resources, use of hydrological systems, database management,
• directing Basin Committees, etc.

All kinds of organizations and structures can cooperate within a twinning between two basin organizations: Universities, local administrations, international commissions or institutions, etc… located in the river basins concerned.

Focus will also be made to build up specific cooperation services within a geographic region, and/or within basin organizations sharing a transboundary river in a sub region.

1. a Latin-American Regional Network of Basin Organizations (LANBO) is already operating for Latin America inside INBO. It is now registered under Mexican law ;
2. a regional network for Central and Eastern Europe - CEE is proposed by the CEE Technical Advisory Committee (CEE-TAC) of Global Water Partnership;
3. South Asian (SAS-RTAC) and Southern Africa RTACs have expressed similar idea in order to share experience and know-how;
4. the African Water Utility Partnership (WUP) program is a rare opportunity to raise such an initiative in other sub regions of Africa ;
5. the Government of the Netherlands has started a twinning process as an action within the framework of 2^nd World Water Forum;
6. contacts are also established and studies undertaken by the French and Norwegian "Water Academy".

1. Direct exchanges of experiences between twin basin organizations

Twinning arrangements may be formalized according to the following provisions:

Twinning partners will report yearly on the progress of twinning activities, on the evolution of their basin organizations, on improvement in sustainable water resources management, use of hydrological systems in the river basins concerned.

2. Regional and international implementation

It is obviously necessary to mobilize the means needed to:

• taking care of balanced cooperation between partners,
• making sure that contacts are open with not only high level executives of twin organizations, but also with technicians and stakeholders, members of basin committees and users' representatives…,

INBO is already supporting twinning arrangements such as: LOIRE BRETAGNE (France) with RIO DOCE (Brazil) ; OUM ER BIA (Morocco) with ADOUR GARONNE (France), etc.

The International Secretariat for Water will facilitate experience sharing between professionals of basin organizations on participatory processes of users related to issues and training in outputs n°2 and n°3.

At the Second World Water Forum eight organizations (Lake Chad Basin Commission; Zambezi Valley Development Authority; Loire-Brittany Water Agency; Adour-Garonne Water Agency; Rhone-Mediterranean-Corsica Water Agency; International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River; International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine; and the Irrigation Department of Mendoza Province Government) signed a declaration of intent on twinning arrangements. The Netherlands is working on an extension of this network.

A specialized small team, with an integrated, multidisciplinary and international vision, associating experts from different geographical regions to INBO and LANBO Permanent Technical Secretariats, and to Regional TACs, is required at the beginning to impulse the project worldwide but also in each of the above mentioned regions of the world.

Assistance when provided by staff of basin organizations will be free and limited to facilitation, without contractual obligations. Only travel and accommodation costs will be shared. But of course, external technical assistance, when requested, will be paid according to international criteria.

More and more countries wish to make their first step in the implementation of a pilot project to test the adaptability of the principles of integrated water resources management at the level of river basins, in order to extend it over the country after some years of experimental practice.

Some others are in the process of introducing water management at river basin level in their national legislation.

These approaches include multiple reflections on:

It is then useful to make available multidisciplinary and multinational teams of experimented specialists-facilitators, coming from basin organizations, to help making progress, on request, in this long process of discussion, reflection, dialogue, and decision-making undertaken at the level of river basins or at the national or regional level.

Contacts can be broadened to specialists from international organizations, e.g. the United Nations organizations, ICID, IPTRID, for drainage and irrigation, or the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD), and other recognized international or national associations when needed.

The International secretariat for Water and its network also provide know-how related to:

• mapping of land use,
• conflict prevention and resolution,
• users' education on integrated water management and water resources protection,
• development of users' willingness and ability to pay.

The competitive advantage of ISW is its capacity to mobilise experts and neutral mediators which have gained a know-how from field experience. Those experts do not have a stake in disputes and are not funded by any direct stakeholders.

It is advisable that basin organizations become active members of the Regional Water Partnerships (RTACs of GWP) and cooperate within such a framework.

It aims at providing the governments which are interested with an organized and coordinated assistance from identified experimented professionals, within multi-year programs, according to the following formulas:

It usually concerns :

• the definition of the new or nascent basin organizations' relevant tasks as compared to those of the existing governmental and state Administrations and local authorities,

• the design of an administrative structure for these new organizations and methods for their control and operation,

• the organization of the participation of representatives from local authorities and different categories of water users through the new Basin Committees,

• the formulation of a masterplan for integrated water resources management and use setting out the objectives to be achieved in the medium term (15-25 years) in the river basin,

• the simulation of the users and polluters' ability to pay and proposals for tax and pricing systems to finance the multi-year basin policy using the users/polluters/pay principles,

• the definition of the first short-term priority investment program (5 years) to achieve the masterplan objectives,

• the design of monitoring and analysis systems and databases, integrated monitoring systems on the scale of the river basin, necessary for acquiring good in-depth knowledge of the basin water resources and hydrological systems, of water abstractions and polluting discharges,

• the training of the new people in charge and technical staff of the pilot basin organizations,

• the securing of means for evaluating on-going policies,

To be really efficient, such projects require:

• the overall programming of cooperation actions to be planned on a minimum 3 to 5 year period and the corresponding financial resources,

• the intervention of multidisciplinary teams made up of experimented professionals with field experience in this kind of organizations or projects, acquired during many years of practice in an administration or basin organization.

The objective could be to start, during the 5-year Associated Program, al least two new cooperation projects per year in different parts of the world and in different administrative, economic and social contexts, including in particular several transboundary rivers to get enough references in each region to promote the general use of our approach.

In order to achieve overall management of water resources at river basin level, it is of prime importance for decision-makers (Directors of River Basin Organizations and Administrations, Basin Committee members, representatives of the Local Authorities and associations of users) to have easy access to complete, representative and reliable information on the following :

This information is often dispersed, heterogeneous and incomplete ... and is rarely comparable and suited to the prerequisites for objective decision-making. Public, para-public and even private organizations may often have access to this information but lack sufficient means for exchanging, gathering, standardizing, summarizing and for capitalizing it amongst them.

It is absolutely necessary to examine:

Real and complete " systems " must be designed and used to assess the resource and uses, especially quality, and organized to constitute integrated information systems.

The exact definition of each stakeholder’s role as well as the issue of financing and its continuity are of prime importance.

Gathering this information requires a complex and consistent organization of monitoring networks, analyses laboratories, data transmission and their checking and control, management of databases, their accessibility and their " products ". For this purpose, permanent means must be made available and their optimizing ensured, in order to obtain all the relevant information at minimum public cost,, limiting this however, to the strict necessary.

To be useful this information must not remain in the form of raw data, but be retrieved in the form of easy-to-understand data which can be handled by all the different categories of users.

The information must be organized according to requirements, whether it be for the study of a "white paper ", masterplans for water management and development, for action programs, budgetary simulations or the basis for water charges, for issuing administrative authorizations or studying projects, for regulation of public works, warning systems or even for evaluating the results of applied policies and monitoring the environment, finally for informing the general public ...

In addition, if the data are to be utilized, they must be made available in the most appropriate forms

Common standards must also be defined to gather often heterogeneous information produced by different stakeholders in order to organize real integrated and consistent information systems at the level of national or transboundary river basins and to centralize the summarized information necessary for formulating governmental policies and for the evolution of implemented policies and programs.

In the specific field of social framework, the International Secretariat for Water will provide following services:

1. Training of personnel of basin organizations,

2. Assisting basin organizations with the setting-up of technical assistance teams to favor users' participation. These teams will foster the users' willingness and ability to pay, particularly marginalized groups of users, prepare need assessment, develop pilot projects and activities related to land use mapping, conflict management, users' education on water management and saving,

3. Formation of partnerships and establishment of institutional mechanisms facilitating equitable participation of people in decision-making and in activities of basin organizations (for example, users' committee, equal involvement of genders in decision-making), conflict management (mediation and resolution).

Collection of information will cover :

Among the most frequent issues are the following in particular:

In all these fields answers and solutions belong clearly to the river basin organization itself: the best practice is the one suited to the social, legal, physical and economic local parameters.

The service provided through this project is to collect actual practices in order to generate ideas and recommendations, and to promote practical guidelines for putting integrated river basin management into practice. Two lines of work can be combined:

The practical model thus constituted should help find solutions to the following issues, among others:

River basin policy and planning :

Operational management:

Analytical tools:

In order to help cooperation on a service basis, INBO will promote a set of common, widely available and easily measurable performance indicators, in a typological form.

The International Secretariat for Water will design practical and operational tools for citizen and users participation in order for basin organizations to be able to reach them, understand their needs, conditions, available know-how and provide basin organizations with means to allow users to express their points of views. Since most basin organizations are located in regions where the majority of population has a low income and is often marginalized both economically and politically, the need for basin organizations to become more skilled in reaching out those populations is obvious.

The RBO-AP, together with all collaborative partners (specialized institutes, research centers, universities, network of professionals from basin organizations, panel of experts to be set up, the Global Water Unit of the World Bank, IWSA task force for measuring water supply and sanitation utility performances, specialized program of the Africa Water Utility Partnership,...) will contribute to improving the knowledge and know-how in the area of basin organizations and IWRM and making them available through the following activities:

1. Enhancing knowledge base :

l produce a state-of-the-art report on the above undertakings to be complemented and upgraded year after year, made widely available through the GWP Information System and the Associated Program's Output n° 4. This report should disseminate the following aspects of river basin management:

- overview of institutional organizations,

- planning practices,

- public participation,

- financing.

l develop land use mapping.

Knowledge of territory's occupation modalities and land use is often difficult in case of populations with unclear status. Each people has a specific relationship to its territory in terms of modes of production, cultural and social space, including spiritual in case of indigenous peoples. Land use mapping is a tool, which allows people to express their visions, conditions, needs and relationships to land and water with their own means of expression. The International Secretariat for Water will develop:

- ethical guidelines for land use mapping methods,

- methodologies to collect, interpret, assess, validate data as well as intellectual property rights,

- participatory methods with users.

2. Capacity building

• staff of new incipient basin organizations, (bases of river basin management: legal and regulatory framework, staffing, organization, technical aspects, economic and financial aspects, with global and in-depth approach, and on-site or abroad training in existing basin organizations in particular);

• experimented staff of operating basin organizations, (specialized training programs: application of the user-polluter-pays principle, financial simulation, industrial pollution control, water law enforcement, management and development of irrigated areas, database management, analyses of water and discharges, etc.); and

• the civil society, members of basin committees and users' representatives (awareness raising, basin organization principles, assessment and control, follow-up, participation in the formulation of masterplans, in the negotiation of priority investment programs, in pricing basin charges, etc.)

• the International Secretariat for Water will design training modules on the four above topics.

The objective is to define the current state-of-the-art of available information and documentation, identify gaps between what users need and what documentation centers can provide, and establish joint strategies to create (i) the infrastructure, (ii) communication networks, and (iii) exchange standards and norms, multilingual tools for information management necessary for bringing about a comprehensive and reliable documentation system in the context of river basin organizations.

Integrated water resources management in a river basin implies access to a broad range of information and knowledge.

Each river basin organization is producing documents and studies to be collected, stored and used and is also using external information and documentation in order to increase its knowledge, improve its techniques and position itself in connection with other counterpart organizations over the world.

The grassroots actors of such a project are the " national relay documentation centers  NRDC". They have to be set up or reinforced in each country or region to direct the network of documentation centers of the basin organizations and administrations concerned.

The NRDC will be the focal point acting as " window " to link national users (primarily basin organizations), specialized national databases, and the incipient international network.

Common outputs, harmonized information and contents, the setting up of the network and its architecture require the followings :

• elaboration of management structures (project unit and management committee) responsible for carrying out joint actions with NRDCs and for developing tools, training, and external technical assistance ;

• building of the network: identification of the best tools and software, search engines, indexing techniques, improvement of access to the system through the Internet, ...  ;

• equipment for the network: search engines, gateways between web-servers, licenses, tools for electronic full-text storage and scanning, etc. ;

• building of the multilingual knowledge base, specialized in the water field, using linguistic equivalencies between specialized thesauruses in different languages, and its integration into search engines for query automatic translation ;

• methodology and common approach to reformat data and base, to create similar information files, to feed the system with validated information on all the selected topics ;

• organization of technical assistance to all NRDCs (training, exchange of experience, adaptation of methods, ... ).

• management of the gate for accessing the system on the Internet.

Knowledge of technologies, innovations, experts, and working teams in that field is useful when stored in documentation bases and directories.

Some techniques are well adapted to some hydrological and hydrogeological contexts ; the transfer of technology to save water, to choose and optimize better processing, and new strategies to protect the environment are required.

Collaboration between experts has to be improved by specific classification services and news groups. Directories produced by NRDCs and associated organizations will make that possible

• manage water information in a comprehensive and coordinated manner with initiatives from IPTRID (FAO), STREAM PROJECT (NL), CAPNET (UNDP), SAWINET (GTZ), EMWIS (European Union and Euro-Mediterranean countries) and try to avoid redundancy and competition ;

• make an inventory of all other water information networks and develop links of particular interest to basin organizations;

• develop mutual tools and common metacrawlers to address and disseminate queries within all existing networks. A common strategy is to be developed to enable users to enter the different networks through a similar window;

• build altogether multilingual tools, dictionaries and glossaries.

The purpose of this program is to assess how common water resources information needs are being met within river basin organizations, and to identify actions that will improve cooperation and collaboration among users of water resources information and documentation.

Some organizations already participate in the project :

• in Latin America: CUNDINAMARCA Regional Autonomous Corporation (Colombia), entrusted by LANBO with the organization of a regional resource center, the National Water Commission (Mexico), Secretariat for Water Resources (Brazilian Ministry of the Environment) ;
• in Europe : the International Office for Water (France), APELE ROMANE (Romania), VITUKI (Hungary), IMWM (Institute for Meteorology and Water Management) associated with the Gdansk Water Foundation (GWF) (Poland), the Water Research Institute: TG MASARYK associated with POVODI MORAVY (Morava River Basin Authority) (Czech Republic).
• in the Mediterranean, EMWIS associated with the fifteen States, Members of the European Union and the 12 countries of the Mediterranean basin, signatories of Barcelona Convention.

The current "AQUADOC-INTER" project is:

• to develop the functions of an international "window",
• to reinforce existing NRDCs,
• to build search engines in various useful international languages,
• to extend the European and Latin-American networks,
• and to create a network in South Asia region.

• develop all the means necessary for exchanging information and structuring the NRDCs responsible for validation, collection, storage and access to knowledge useful for water management, and thus :
• define formats, tools, gateways to break barriers between networks, use existing national networks, and provide access to various information from remote sources,
• facilitate connection for all policy makers and local users,
• identify cultural and policy issues in the context of sharing/exchanging information,

• manage information needs and services for users and decision makers, and thus:
• identify the existing information, its accuracy, credibility, adequacy, and quality for current and future decision-making needs in various basin organizations,
• define what gaps exist in meeting water information needs; and identify how and by whom these needs can be best addressed, to avoid redundancy and create new, more efficient modes of operation to benefit all ;

• harmonize within "AQUADOC-INTER" similar work carried out by NRDCs, by organizing and developing a project central unit, common tools for information and document processing and storage, and defining consistent standards and grids to classify information; by organizing specialized workshops focusing on multilinguism, electronic formats, international software (ORACLE, UNESCO formats…), information fields, metering and tariffing users, copyright...

During its next General Assembly to be held in Cracow-Zakopane (Poland) from 30 September to 4 October, INBO intents to have new statutes providing legal entity and strengthening its capacity to directly manage cooperation programs between members, this, with transparency and under the control of an approved "Auditor".

INBO network entirely relies on the actual experience of its members. In order to successfully implement the proposed Associated Program, INBO will draw on a variety of sources within its network.

During its 5-year lifetime, INBO acquired experience and worked on principles that can help defining guidelines and formulating best practices as described above. In the meantime, twinning arrangements have already being established between some INBO members.

Privileged links will also be developed with particular centers of expertise such as the Center for Research on River Basin Administration of DELFT University of Technology (RBA Delft, the Netherlands), the International Secretariat for Water (Montreal, Canada) and others to be identified as the program develops.

On the issue of knowledge synthesis, contacts have been initiated by INBO with officers-in-charge of the Global Water Unit of the World Bank, the Knowledge Management Network of the World Bank, the IWSA task force for Measuring Water Supply and Sanitation Utility performances and RBA Delft, and the French "Académie de l'Eau" or the Norwegian "Water Academy", etc.

INBO Permanent Technical Secretariat is already in close connection with the nascent CAPNET (IWRM associated program of GWP) and the Water Utility Partnership associated program of GWP (project n°2 development of performance indicators and benchmarking).

INBO has already promoted with its members a tool for international cooperation: "AQUADOC-INTER", that aims to:

• facilitate access to existing information on know-how in the water sector;
• develop the sharing of information while making others aware of their responsibilities, activities and topics of interest ...;
• elaborate joint outputs and cooperation programs to develop available information and promote the collection of missing information.
• download all documentation, studies and publications useful for integrated water resources management at the level of river basins.

At the regional level, contact has been established with the Organization of American States (OAS). The secretariats of INBO and LANBO, co-organizer with OAS of this event, were present in the Water Information Summit in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA, October 1999. INBO will work in close collaboration with the following international programs :

• The Euro Mediterranean Water Information System (EMWIS), financed by the European Union, France, Italy and Spain and by the 27 countries concerned regarding their national focal points, is in its initial phase on subjects related to water saving in the particular context of the Mediterranean basin.
• The African Water Utility Partnership (WUP) project n°1: Institutional Options, associated program of GWP, financed by the World Bank and France, is in its approval phase to design a reference library and an Institutional Observation & Evaluation Unit on institutional development in Africa.
• PACADIRH is also concerned by this action.

On the issue of facilitating change in countries, it may be worth mentioning, as an example, that the "Comisión Centroamericana de Ambiente y Desarrollo" (CCAD) is currently reviewing its "Plan de acción para la gestión integrada de los recursos hídricos del istmo centroamericano" (PACADIRH). This plan focuses on integrated water resource development within the countries of Central America where 57% of total resources are shared. This plan includes the upgrading of basin organizations within LANBO (INBO regional network).

INBO is managed by its "Liaison Bureau", made up of:

• the serving President of the Network,
• the two former Presidents,

together with the incumbent or substitute members chosen among INBO member organizations according to their geographic origin:

• 2 incumbents and 2 substitutes for Africa,
• 4 incumbents and 4 substitutes for America,
• 1 incumbent and 1 substitute for Asia,
• 4 incumbents and 4 substitutes for Europe.

The Bureau members are elected during each General Assembly.

For each above-mentioned geographic region:

For economic purpose, the meetings of the Associated Program Steering Committee and of INBO Liaison Bureau will be combined whenever possible.

When appropriate, specialized technical meetings will be organized with the already planned meetings.

It would be responsible for:

This Technical Unit would gather not only experts from INBO and LANBO Permanent Technical Secretariats but also specialists from GWP's CEE and SAS-TAC and experts from different countries or organizations interested in supporting the "Integrated Water Resources Management – Developing and Strengthening Basin Organizations" Associated Program.