What Governance Failures Reveal about Water Resources Management in a Municipality of Brazil
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Lots of key words? Are so many required?
This manuscript needs an English language grammar edit.
Why did COVID make the situation worse? No reasons are given.
Dumping untreated sewage into rivers in 2021 is madness, this issue should have been dealt with decades ago.
This submission is really long and detailed, as a result it reads more like a government technical document than an academic paper.
Author Response
Dear reviewer
We appreciate your valuable comments and we are making the requested changes.
1. We are reorganizing the text, making the following changes:
- the introduction emphasizes the urgency of the topic, given the legal and administrative changes that the Brazilian government has been making in the area of water resources management, the environment, basic sanitation and urban development; and the scarcity of studies on local/municipal management.
- we deleted information in the introduction, referring to COVID 19, which did not aggravate, but made the deficits in basic sanitation more evident, mainly in the outskirts of cities. We consider this information unnecessary as we do not address health issues in the research;
- in section 4, which deals with the research methods, the approach adopted is better justified, regarding the 4 public policies that characterize the integrated management of water resources in the municipality of Itabuna: water resources, environment, basic sanitation and urban development.
2. We reversed the sequence of sections 2 and 3. Thus, Section 2 presents the magnitude of the problems related to water management in Brazilian cities, which result in the degradation of urban rivers. We present this study in the international and national context, adding statistical data and graphics. The well-known advances that Brazil has achieved in the development of its national water resources management system and the current reforms proposed in the country and in the state of Bahia. The Brazilian federative system and the role of the municipality in this context are described. The absence of municipalities in the national water resources management system is highlighted, a fact that hinders the multi-level integration of water resources.
3. More detailed information on the role of municipalities in Brazil and in the state of Bahia, regarding the four areas of management considered in this study, were placed in Appendix 1.
4. We created a section 2.1 in which the characterization of the municipality of Itabuna, the locus of our research, is made, justifying its representativeness, based on data on municipal management and recent changes. We highlight data weaknesses.
5. In the description of the methods and techniques (section 4), the adopted approach and the applied techniques are better justified, based on the reasons presented in the previous section (section 3). The exploratory character of the research is highlighted, since we did not find other studies analyzing failures in water governance, with the approach proposed by the OECD, in Brazilian municipalities. The use of ethnographic techniques in the analysis of failures is related to the scarcity of existing information on the effective functioning of the institutional arrangement and the application of management instruments in municipalities.
6. We separated the presentation of the results from discussion, in sections 5 and 6.
7. In the discussion, the administrative failure is highlighted, which refers to gaps in management scales, and how this impacts the analyzed municipality and national water resources management system. Another important gap, the information gap, is discussed, for local scale and the consequences for regional and national scale.
8. In conclusion, it is argued that water governance is an essential approach to improve water resources management in the analyzed municipality. The current legal and administrative changes tend to weaken the articulation of policies at the local scale, making the discussion of water governance for Brazilian municipalities even more urgent. Finally, the paper will place the results in the national and international context and present a reflection of the scope and limitations of the study results.
9. We are evaluating the possibility of submitting the article to language review, using the journal's services.
Since the changes require a general restructuring of the text, we ask for an extended deadline to submit our revised manuscript.
Thank you for understanding
Sincerely,
Valérie Nicollier
Reviewer 2 Report
Brief summary
- This manuscript is presenting an analysis of water governance failures on municipal level in Brazil. By applying the widely accepted OECD principles on "water governance failures" the paper tries to identify links between governance failures and unsustainable management of water resources. The manuscript discusses the importance of [good?] water governance for promoting integrated management.
General concept comments:
- The title is appropriate although it is too focused on the case study, which is also a main shortcoming of this paper itself.
- The paper is lacking a clear logical structure that supports the overall narrative, e.g. introduction, research questions, methods and concepts, results, discussion, conclusion. Some key thematic elements can be found in the various sections, however, they are not logically lined up and made explicit (eg. hypotheses). The research questions and methods are introduced much to late.
- The missing self-explaining structures and headings make it very hard to follow the red thread of the arguments presented.
- The study design and analysis surely need more explanation and justification, e.g. what is the role of the literature review and why was it executed in that way? Generally, arguments are presented in a purely descriptive manner. The analysis should have been more thoroughly prepared.
- Many methods are mentioned (e.g. ethnographic research, participant observation). However, in contrast to the literature review, a complete documentation of these other sources are missing.
- The results and the discussion section needs to be separated.
- The paper lacks a profound reflection of the scope and limitations of the study results.
- The discussion of the results needs to go hand in hand with academic literature that relate to the main themes especially literatures on governance failures, policy and functional (in)coherence and policy fragmentation on both process and outcome level. A clear definition and separation of these terms would be essential to cover the topic completely. The main findings are very much limited to the case study and do not really contribute to current academic debate.
Specific comments
- Chapter 1 and 2 would have profited from more recent and key literature.
- Chapter 4 should be substantially shortened as it contains superfluous information (e.g. geographic coordinates).
Author Response
Dear Reviewer, please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
I think that the article titled “What Governance Failures reveal about Water Resources Management in a Municipality of Brazil” can be published in the journal at the present form. The methodology is correct and completed. The scope of this manuscript is to discuss a supposed gap in the organization of water resources management in Brazil, based on the analysis of water governance in the municipality of Itabuna, located in the South of the state of Bahia, Northeastern Brazil, with a population 85 of almost 214,000 inhabitants and urbanization rate close to 98%.
The study was done for the specific case study (water governance in Itabuna, Brazil) which have a different condition from other study area and the authors could conclude the result of these analyses can be applied to other areas, and just applying for a specific region in the interest of international readers. How we can be sure that we will get the same results for other study areas, like rural or urban areas. I would recommend presenting this study as a generic study by adding some other case studies. It would be useful for the reader to see tables or graphs with the climatic, hydrologic parameters and the descriptive statistical tests (descriptive statistics, coordinates, elevation, etc.).
In addition, I propose to authors to check the journal standards for the captions (figures and tables). Also, there are many tables in the manuscript it could be useful to move various in the appendix.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer, please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The article is very interesting and well presented, I think it is important to include a contextualization at the national level, since Brazil is the largest country in South America and one of the most populated in the world, therefore local public policies may vary the management and management of water in municipalities. As the contribution of the article which shows the importance of water management independent of the spatial scale of the area, can be massifiable in developing countries. What advice is provided for these countries that are lagging behind in water management for small and medium spatial scales.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer, please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Extensive editing of English language and style required.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
we appreciate your valuable comments and we made a minor revision: we reduced the text in the second session, placing some information in Appendix I and II; we described better the research techniques; we seek to increase coherence between research methods, results and discussion. We sought to highlight the representativeness of the municipality of Itabuna in the micro-region of basic sanitation and in the context of small and middle sized municipalities of Brazil.
Kind Regards,
Valérie Nicollier
Reviewer 4 Report
The paper improved for that razon its ok for poblication
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
Thank you very much for your comments.
We will use the English Editing Services of MDPI to revise the manuscript.
Kind regards,
Valérie Nicollier
