Its restructuring in 2000 was intended to broaden access for many stakeholders and to engage in policy planning as an iterative learning process. The World Bank has been a key source of facilitating these agreements. While progress has been made in creating many types of formal cross-border institutional mechanisms and instruments to further cooperation in riparian systems management, there is yet a very long way to go in every case. In general, cooperation continues to be bilateral rather than multilateral, and while it might be promoted in the spirit of existing cross-border agreements, with few exceptions cooperation is typically sought after rather than before projects are initiated.