Policies, institutions, and regulations: PIRs of a stormwater management system

Urban services, like stormwater management, are complex tasks that depend on many actors and involve activities that fall within several fields of knowledge, but infrastructure solutions have been known for a long time. Recently, the view that urban water should be treated in an integrated way has become more pronounced, breaking the pathway dependency that treated it in isolation. Since the last decade, the perception that policies, institutions, and regulations (PIRs) condition good results has become more pronounced. The key question lies in incentives capable of mobilizing actors to produce aligned PIRs in a governance system. Better results can come from transformations in the incentives that currently exist for PIRs. The compatibility between incentives, which are not always identical for all involved, aligning them toward results, is the main objective. Based on these premises, aspects related to the necessary ideological change are analyzed here, that is, at the level of ideas and conceptions, which reflect the perception of objective, involving all actors, public and private, attracting them to solve the challenges posed, for example, the delivery of services according to sustainable development goals (SDGs). Examples of this in-progress transformation, a paradigm shift, are presented as support for reflection and experimentation.