Design of future regional projects should better analyse the situation in countries to identify risks and eventual obstacles to transboundary management process at a regional scale. This should be more realistically reflected in the project documents.

Project implementation team should follow-up with the partners to determine an accurate level of co-financing committed to the project. GEF should consider a standardised approach to calculating co-financing to ensure that partners are calculating their commitments on the same basis.

Projects’ design should have clearly elaborated the exit strategy. Many transboundary management processes are dependent on the project financing before they become fully endorsed by the countries, and no project continuity may negatively affect the process.

The future regional project designs should continue allocating resources for the implementation of pilot or demonstration projects. Such projects may prove helpful to incorporate emerging and/or innovative issues and/or solutions as well as national priorities for the transboundary river basin. These projects should be planned in order to maintain the equal participation of all countries.

The project should in its design phase elaborate more extensively on the development of institutional solutions for transboundary water management that might include, for example, establishment of river commissions coupled with the necessary legal provisions if the initial analysis shows that such longer-term solution might be feasible. Since such decision is in the hands of the political authorities of the countries concerned, the project should support the establishment of such a solution, if it will be taken.

The execution arrangement of the regional projects should continue using decentralised project management, such as Officers on the field in addition to the central implementation unit.