Water scarcity and droughts are on the increase and expected to aggravate further due to climate change. Early actions are required to adapt to these changes. The transnational project 'Benefit of governance in DROught adaPtation (DROP)' aimed to enhance the preparedness and resilience of Northwest European (NWE) regions to such periods of drought. Ecologic Institute was one of the five knowledge partners of DROP which jointly develop further an existing Governance Assessment Tool and applied the tool in the six regions of the participating water authorities.

DROP was a transnational project and integrated knowledge from science, policy and practice. The project was implemented through collaboration between six regional water authorities (practice partners) and five knowledge institutes (knowledge partners).

The knowledge partners of DROP (including Ecologic Institute) developed an existing Governance Assessment Tool further and applied the tool in the six regions of the participating water authorities. Ecologic Institute was responsible for the assessment in two of these: the Flanders region in Belgium and the Eifel-Rur region in North-Rhine Westphalia. This assessment intended to show what aspects of the various regional governance settings support or restrict the implementation of drought and water scarcity measures. On this basis, recommendations were developed on how to optimise the regional governance setting from a drought perspective. The experience of evaluating governance settings with the Governance Assessment Tool was collected in a practical guide on how to use this tool.

The practice partners implemented and tested innovative, concrete measures focusing on specific drought and water scarcity problems related to nature, agriculture and freshwater supply. The project aided other NWE regions through the development of tools, support and guidance that are of beneficial use in the process of adapting to drought and water scarcity situations, which are likely to increase in NWE in the near future.

The experiences with the governance assessment and the implementation of concrete measures of the practice partners was integrated into a handbook. The handbook includes a synthesis of the main project results and transferable lessons.

The DROP project received European Regional Development Funding through INTERREG IVB.