Governance Arrangements for Integrated Water Resources Management in Ontario, Canada, and Oregon, USA: Evolution and Lessons
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The aim of the paper is to explore the significance of spatial and temporal conditions and changes in context for the development of governance arrangements pertaining to the implementation of the IWRM, by applying the analysis to two case studies: Ontario and Oregon. Although the paper is almost well structured and results significantly presented, some suggestions are recommended to be addressed in order to improve the readiness of the paper and provide a more deepened analysis of governance principles in IWRM.
L21-22 (Abstract): the comparison between Oregon (locally-driven and entrepreneurial approach) and Ontario (co-operative inter-governmental approach) should be detailed after presenting both case studies.
L32 (keywords): “watershed councils” should be placed before “Ontario” and “Oregon”.
L52-53: the sentence “turbulent and chaotic nature of society in the 21st century” should be justified from references. What reasons motivated the “chaotic nature” of society.
L63-64: provide references able to explain, with examples, the sentence “IWRM has evolved from the ground-up and the top-down, according to the varying political, economic, social and environmental circumstances and needs…”
L73: Why both case studies have been selected if several differences are identified?
L75-76: The fact that Ontario was an early- adopter of IWRM (1940s) and Oregon a late adopter (1980s) is not a limitation when comparing both contexts to trying to extract learnings? If the aim of the paper is to “explore the significance of spatial and temporal conditions and change…”, how “temporal” issues could be analysed when both case studies are not contextualised in the same or nearly temporal context?.
L82-85: Please, clarify more accurately the objectives of the paper.
L85: Why these six key aspects of IWRM governance are selected and no other ones?
L86-87: “The paper concludes with a discussion of the main insights…” However, no “discussion” section is provided because Section 5 (Conclusion and lessons” is not a real discussion of the obtained results.
L88-89: the sentence “and the potential lessons for implementation of IWRM more generally” and this idea of “generalisation” seems to move opposed to the sentence from the abstract “Guidelines produced by some major international organisations create a misleading impression that IWRM can be implemented in a standardised fashion”. How to justify that the paper aims to move away from standardisation but aims to provide general assumptions when applying governance principles in IWRM context?
L97: “For others”, provide references as example.
L115-119, L124-125 and L129-133: Definitions are not needed if they are considered in the text.
L135-137: It should be useful to provide some references focused on governance principles applied to improve decision-making processes, for example:
Ricart S., Rico A.M., Kirk N., Bülow F., Ribas A., Pavón D. (2018). What we learned about water governance in multifunctional irrigation systems? Balancing stakeholder engagement from understanding hydrosocial cycle. International Journal of Water Resources Development. In press. Doi:10.1080/07900627.2018.1447911.
L137: Warner reference must be numbered as reference 14 and not 13.
L146-152: Why providing governance capabilities if they are not clearly applied to the case studies? It should be useful to incorporate some reference to the perception of water management. L212 makes reference to this concepts but without more explanation.
L161-166: A lot of attention has been provided to governance but less to IWRM while this second concept seems to be more relevant according to the aim of the paper.
L174: Expression “We would add…” must be moved to impersonal cognition, as “However, while”
L182: In addition to the justification of the reason why these six key aspects of governance had been choose, please detail from which source they are used.
L187-205: The focus in fixed to “water”, please provide some reference to water governance between confronted water uses.
L190: Ref. 26 is from 1969. Can you provide a more recent reference? If not, please justify the reason to use a reference from fifty years ago.
L212: Ref 23 should be renumbered as ref. 24.
L220-221: According to the authors, different interviews have been conducted in each case study (24 in Oregon and over one hundred in Ontario). However, no details about them are provided (script used in the interviews, who was interviewed –public-private partnerships, citizens, water associations, etc.- who was the interviewed and the interviewer, where the interviews have been conducted, how much time were needed to conduct the interviews, etc.).
L220-222: How to compare few interviews conducted in 2014 with more interviews conducted form 1980s? Did the interviewers use the same script and ask for the same questions? How the analysis of the answers from the respondents have been compared in order to provide compared learnings?
L239 and L571: Both figures with map location are not clearly useful for the analysis. We suggest to change both maps for figures in which can be highlighted the structure of decision-making processes in IWRM processes.
L265-267: Detail the cause of seven people died for contamination reasons (when happened, management, political consequences, etc.)
L280: Until this point no information was provided according to the number of CA (36). Maybe this information could be placed before.
L296: Section 4.2.6 should be renumbered as Section 4.1.1.
L309-316 and L327-336: We suggest presenting these bullet points in a Table in which to compare changes the priorities.
L361: Section 4.1.3 Engagement should be structured in a Figure in order to better explain the relationship between stakeholders and the level of governance.
L370-388: These five layers of engagement with their many partners could be presented as a Figure as an evolution process.
L420-427: The focus of this paragraph should be water resources but in this paragraph there is no reference to water… maybe putting some examples of how the farming community or landowners are related to take decision-making processes.
L504-513: This paragraph is an example of governance between different confronted water uses. How to pay for ecosystems services? Public-private partnerships?
L530: Both case studies need for a brief presentation about the geographical and socioeconomic context (location, surface, population, main activities, etc.)
L584-595: Please provide some examples of these actions that appeared in the webpage of the case study.
L624 - L690 – L730: Authors refer to the interviews conducted in Oregon during 2014 but no details have been provided.
L696: Does not exist a Columbia River council able to manage all the secondary watershed councils? This will be an authentic example of IWRM.
L768: A Discussion section must be provided in order to compare obtained results from similar studies and which lessons could be learned after, for example, 80 years of IWRM (as it is the case of Ontario case study). Recommendations should be provided in order to understand the added value of both case studies in comparison to standard guides offered by international institutions.
L806: “In many Western countries”, please provide examples and references.
L957 - and so on: References 9, 10, 12, 26, 30, 35, 39, 49, 50, and 51 are dated before year 2000. Does it could be possible to provide more recent references related to the same topics?
L975: A year of publication needs to be provided for the Reference 19.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
Thank you very much for your helpful and constructive feedback. Please see the atatched cover letter for details of our responses to the various points you have raised.
Kind Regards
Nigel Watson
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors present a very interesting paper on Governance Arrangements for Integrated Water Resources Management They use two case studies Ontario, Canada and Oregon, USA, criticizing the tendency to replicate guidelines and instructions for Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM).
They claim that this is misleading in many occasions since the authorities ignore particularities and special circumstances that characterize each specific case study.
In this direction they propose a six-stage procedure focusing on (a) scope, (b) scale, (c) responsibility, (d) engagement, (e) finances and (f) review process and mechanisms.
The methodology, the approach and the results of their implementation in the two case study areas, are useful and enlightening.
In my opinion, it would be in the benefit of water resources managers to read this paper.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
Thank you very much for your positive and encouraging feedback. Please see the attached cover letter for further details regarding our responses to suggestions from the reviewers and modificatiions made to the paper.
Kind regards
Nigel Watson
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
