Modified Transboundary Water Interaction Nexus (TWINS): Xayaburi Dam Case Study
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors of this highly interesting, relevant and empirically-rich article set out to assess the development of interstate interactions between relevant riparian countries - in particular Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia - related to the Xayaburi Dam between 2000 and 2019. They develop and apply a convincing analytical framework, the TWINS-Framework, that they are adapted to address better the specifics of the case under scrutiny, especially by including non-state actors more strongly and accounting for conflicts and cooperation indications in one single event, and to put the water-related discussion in a broader political perspective.
The authors explored and thoroughly investigated a huge amount of empirical material including policy and other official documents, newspaper and other media sources, and linked two existing rich databases. They identify and analyze a high number of relevant events that are often dichotomous in character, i.e. showing indications of cooperation and conflict at the same time. The authors nicely describe the overall relations 'journey' and present the details and factors for these dynamics by assessing them bilaterally, i.e. between Laos and Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam respectively. These are indeed very useful insights - although sometimes quite concise - that help better understand the general dynamics.
In my opinion, there are no major obstacles that would prevent this article from being published in 'Water'. However, there are some minor aspects that the authors should address when revising the manuscript:
1) The authors point to the fact that they could only use English-language documentation. This does not limit the validity or reliability of the results, in my opinion, however, I would be interested to learn about the perspective of the authors if including non-English documents (in particular for smaller, regional events and media discourses) would have resulted in somewhat different findings.
2) For those readers not too familiar with the region, a map showing the position of the dam, river, and riparian states would be good. Perhaps it is in the supplementary material which, however, I failed to assess/open.
Lines 62f.: NOt sure if I understood the point that you did not regard the legal status of the actors? Do you mean state- or non-state actors?
Lines 102ff.: Better: "Main challenges of...include (1)"
Line 112: "we conducted a content analysis"
Line 253: Please check sentence "articles and other English-written"?
Line 306: "the sentiment analysis does not"
Line 335: "releasing a comprehensive"
Line 373: "to file several"
Line 381: "legal toothlessness"? If not, I did not understand the sentence fully
Line 409 and elsewhere: "To sum up,"
Line 457: "slowly became a"
Line 525: Please check line - " the PACCOM one-day workshop"?
Some limits - only English sources; Map is missing
Author Response
We are honored for such a positive review. To your first question, we use English-written sources to keep the information unity and merge them with the existing water-event databases (e.g. International Water Event Database, Water Conflict Chronology Database, Lancang-Mekong Water Cooperation Database). Although this method seems feasible, by excluding other-language sources, we may omit some important micro-events (e.g. local protests, meetings, projects) that did not appear in official and public sources. To overcome this challenge, we suggest to conduct series of interviews with multi-level stakeholders to (a) incorporate some micro-events and (b) get feedback to particular water events where further information are missing. In future, we plan to enrich our current Lancang-Mekong Cooperation and Conflict Database (LMCCD) by native languages in riparian states, particularly Chinese-written sources which we will translate in English. Despite these micro-events might not have a strong influence on the transboundary water interaction, we believe that these events might help us to identify new incentives and clarify the involvement of other non-state actors in transboundary water interaction that we did not previously consider.
To your second question, the map showing the Xayaburi dam on Mekong River has not been included in the supplement. Although we support your suggestion, we are afraid we will not include the map in this revision. In fact, within just three days for uploading the revision, we were not sure if we will design an appropriate GIS map or deliver the permission with the authorship of existing maps in time.
To sum up, we accept your recommendations, add more information about our perspective on English-written sources, and re-phrase the text. The map was not included in the text due to time reasons.
Changes upon your request:
Lines 62f.: NOt sure if I understood the point that you did not regard the legal status of the actors? Do you mean state- or non-state actors?
We meant both state- and non-state actors (original TWINS framework mainly focus on state actors). We change the line 63 to “(i) explore cooperation and conflict over the Xayaburi dam with both state- and non-state actors and (ii) considering the Xayaburi dam in broader context.
Lines 102ff.: Better: "Main challenges of...include (1)"
Accepted. We change the line 103-104 to “Main challenges of the TWINS Framework include… (1)”
Line 112: "we conducted a content analysis"
Accepted. We change the line 113 to “we conducted a content analysis”
Line 253: Please check sentence "articles and other English-written"?
We simplified the sentence although almost 50% of sources represent primary literature. We change the line 253 to “Based on the content analysis of more than 1440 English-written official documents, policy reports, research papers and newspaper articles, we…”
Line 306: "the sentiment analysis does not"
Accepted. We change the line 308 to “the sentiment analysis does not”
Line 335: "releasing a comprehensive"
Accepted. We change the line 337 to “releasing a comprehensive”
Line 373: "to file several"
Accepted. We change the line 375 to “to file several”
Line 381: "legal toothlessness"? If not, I did not understand the sentence fully
Accepted. We change the line 383 to “toothless law on the MRC PNPCA process…”
Line 409 and elsewhere: "To sum up,"
Accepted. We change the “To sum up” in the whole text – see line 411, line 486 and line 556.
Line 457: "slowly became a"
Accepted. We change the line 459 to “slowly became a”
Line 525: Please check line - " the PACCOM one-day workshop"?
Accepted. We change the line 527-528 to “participants on the PACCOM one-day workshop”
Some minor typos, for example "able" in lines 145-146.
Accepted. We change the line 146-147 to “We hope by applying this concept on other case studies will enlarge…”
List of all changes:
- Add the corresponding authorship (we gave a credit to one of your author for contributing to the writing of presented paper – see line 4-10 and 613-616)
- Grammar issues (see line 50 “possess”; line 220 “state’s assurance”; line 276 “Also,…”; line 312 “does not reach”; line 354 “a comprehensive”; line 431, 505 and 577 “To sum up”)
- Style format (see line 62-64 “state and non-state actors”; line 104-105 “main challenges… include”; line 147-148 “will enlarge the scope”; line 254-256 “more than 1440 English-written…” line 304-305 “examining”; line 547-548 “participants on the PACCOM”; line 563 “disparities”; line 679 “under review”)
- Adding sub-chapters (see line 253 “3.1. Water cooperation and conflict event analysis”; line 267 “3.2. Contours of the transboundary water interaction”; and line 281 “Evolution of the transboundary water interaction”)
- Improving and changing the tables (see line 266 and line 294)
- Adding text about incentives of conflict (see line 328-336 and line 603-609)
- Changing the hierarchy of the challenges (see line 346, 352 and 358)
- Adding text about current challenges of English-written sources (see line 340-345)
- Adding one publication about incentives of conflict (see line 729-730)
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have conducted a very interesting study with a quite extensive literature review. I am not an expert on this methods but they have made a valuable effort and the study is really interesting. I have to congratulate the authors. In my opinion only minor changes are required. My suggestions are:
I would present a more ambitious objectives in line with the results and conclusions.
Some minor typos, for examepl "able" in lines 145-146.
In my opinion tables 2 and 3 are figures and the quality of "table 3" can be largely improved.
In my opinion it would be worth going further in the causes of the conflicts to draw specific conclusions on this question.
Author Response
We really appreciate your positive comment on the presented article. To your question about causes of the conflicts, we agree that there are many factors in water conflicts that should be furtherly clarified, particularly the power dispositions and power exercise between states. However, one of our previous ambition to modify the Framework of Hydro-hegemony (analyzing four pillars of power - see Warner et al. 2017, Zeitoun et al. 2017) bounced on (a) the limited number of parameters (49 comprehensive indicators is just a start), (b) measurability, correlation and verification of data (particularly in terms of bargaining and ideational power) and (c) lack of inter-annual data (comparison of current situation rather than evolution of the interstate relations). The presented article provides an alternative tool for interpreting the transboundary water interaction and applied the new TWINS framework on the Xayaburi case study. We believe that for more ambitious conclusions, we need to conduct more tests and improve the new framework by incorporating other relevant issues from other research fields.
To conclude, we fully accept your recommendations, add further information about cooperation and conflict, and improve the graphical design of the tables and figures. To illustrate the challenges in interpreting the incentives of cooperation and cooperation, we provide you a theoretical-methodological guideline of revised Framework of Hydro-hegemony which was implemented on examining different power assets and the interstate relations between China, Myanmar and Cambodia.
For further information - see the attachment (Revision Notes - ver. 3.1). Also, upon your request - we provide you one of our previous paper in which we point out the challenges and obstacles of the FHH framework (please, ask the editor to send you in a private message).
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
