In times of climate change, periods of drought will occur more frequently. This causes challenges for water use, ranging from limitations on the navigability of water courses, limited availability of water for irrigation and drinking water supply, reduced hydropower production, increasing concentrations of pollutants, deteriorating water quality, and ecosystem degradation. Dealing with droughts, however, is a complex puzzle due to the multi-level governance characteristics of international river basins and the need to meet the freshwater demands of all sectors involved. This increases the need to address drought issues in a coordinated way, along all levels of decision making. Thus far, the way this must be executed has been under-researched. This paper addresses this knowledge gap as it aims to provide design principles for good multi-level drought risk governance in international river basins. In order to meet our aim, we first reviewed literature on multi-level and good governance and established an assessment framework. This framework was applied in a case study on drought risk governance in the international Rhine basin. Policy documents were analyzed and key informants interviewed. We found that although the governance practice in the basin meets most of our framework criteria, differences between the international level, the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland also occurred. We have synthesized our findings into a list of 10 design principles for good multi-level drought risk governance, which could function as a starting point for the analysis and improvement of other multi-level drought risk governance practices.
