Through a variety of case studies concerned with management of temporary water scarcity, approaches adopted by different institutions in the North and in the South will be compared. Emerging institutions, such as voluntary agreements, river contracts, cooperative emergency boards, on the one hand, and more traditional command-and-control top-down planning will offer a variety of solutions, also depending on the local endowment of infrastructure and management systems. Three events in the Po basin (2003, 2005-2006 and 2011) will show how the development of participatory institutions and early warning pro-cedures has contributed to manage effectively events that would otherwise be capable of causing much more serious economic and social impacts
