The papers in this volume address water governance issues and phenomena from different perspectives, and at different levels. These collected papers, however, set out to address similar questions. The first is: ‘How is water governance evolving at different levels of government?’ In this question government refers to public (democratic) organisations in which politics, guidance and administration are combined in a formal set of rules, positions and procedures. Governance refers to the variety of organisations active with respect to a certain collective topic, like in this case water. The need for protection against flooding, drought and pollution can only be fulfilled if a variety of public organisations and private organisations dealing with public services and investments and non governmental organisations are able to generate jointly governance capacity.