Institutional and legal arrangements in the Nile river basin: suggestions to improve the current situation toward adaptive integrated water resources management.

A comparative study was conducted in this work in order to investigate the current situation in the Nile river basin (NRB) regarding the institutional and legal arrangements needed to support the adaptive integrated water resources management (AIWRM) strategy. Two similar river basins were selected to achieve this comparison and to introduce suggestions to reform the current situation in the basin. Before that, the ideal situation is investigated to be as a yardstick for the desired situation. The study indicated that the necessary AIWRM criteria may include regulatory as well as implementation organizations that support shared-vision reaching with its all necessary features (cooperation, stakeholders' participation, subsidiarity, and information and knowledge exchange). Thus the main features of the desired situations regarding AIWRM in river basins are stakeholders' participation, learning-driven ability, quick response to risks and uncertainties, and finally a legal framework that could support these criteria. Although the AIWRM criteria seem to be satisfied in NRB, the basin lacks the necessary regulatory institutions as well as the legal framework. According to this, this study recommends to reform the current situation in NRB by creating regulator institutions (policy and decision making level) as well a legal framework to legitimate them.