This collection of papers explains how knowledge and capacity development can contribute to improved, effective water management with a digest of lessons learned in the areas of development of tools and techniques, field applications and evaluation. The authors are prominent practitioners, capacity builders and academics within the water and capacity development sectors.

Capacity Development for Improved Water Management starts with an introduction and overview of progress and challenges in knowledge and capacity development in the water sector. The next part presents tools and techniques that are being used in knowledge and capacity development in response to the prevailing challenges in the water sector, and a review of experience with capacity change in other sectors. In the third part a number of cases are presented that cover knowledge and capacity development experiences in the water resources and water services sectors. This part also presents experiences on water education for children and on developing gender equity. The fourth part provides experiences with the monitoring and evaluation of knowledge and capacity building.

Guy Alaerts
is lead water resources specialist at the World Bank, and professor of knowledge and
capacity building at UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education. He is involved in
research on knowledge and capacity development of public water management
organisations, and is working on large-scale water sector reform processes in Asia and
South Eastern Europe.
Maarten Blokland
is an Associate Professor in Water Services Management at UNESCO-IHE Institute
for Water Education, a position he took up again in 2007, after working fulltime as the
Institute's Deputy Director and Acting Director from August 2002 to October 2007.
He has worked in the water supply and sanitation sector since 1975, and worked in
more than 25 developing and newly industrialized countries.
Matt Hare
is senior programme officer at the UN-Water Decade Programme on Capacity
Development (UNW-DPC), in Bonn, Germany. His specializes in the areas of
curriculum development and training-of-trainers programmes, and on the themes of
participatory integrated water resources management and adaptation to climate change.
Judith Kaspersma
is working on her PhD research in knowledge and capacity development at UNESCOIHE
Institute for Water Education. She has been previously involved
in consultancy activities in the field of institutional and organisational development of
public organisations in the water sector in Asia and the Middle East.