This study proposes a conceptual model applied to water resources management for assessing environmental management policies according to sustainable development principles. The main premise is that public policies have a natural cycle of design, regulation, implementation and evaluation, to achieve their institutional objectives. Institutions involved in politics are conditioned by the cultural environment, so that institutional performance is influenced by subjects and standards behaviors, physical parameters, and in turn, can orient institutional change. These elements define the criteria for efficiency assessment under a measure of sustainable development and in accordance to Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) methodology. Based on literature, documents, case study and by applying the deductive method, Brazilian National Water Resources Policy (1997) is analyzed, especially for groundwater industrial user’s rights in the lower course of Paraiba River Basin, Paraiba, Brazil, located on a semi-arid region. Through the establishment of qualitative and quantitative analysis, the generated model was calibrated at institutional and environmental levels with data from the case study. The generated metadata w ere used to compose the indicators that feed the model. This model allow s a perspective of IWRM application, providing objective results on the efficiency feasibility assessment of environmental and water management public policies.
