IWRM and Payments for Ecosystem Services
Integrated water resources management (IWRM) is critical for managing and protecting increasingly stressed water resources on the Canadian Prairies, but the institutional capacity to actually implement IWRM is weak. Water resource decision-making is currently a complex mix of municipal, provincial and state, and federal strategies and procedures with often-overlapping jurisdictional responsibilities.
Nonetheless, watershed-based IWRM and payments for ecosystem services (PES) principles are clear but independent policy directions on the Canadian Prairies that—if successfully integrated—could greatly clarify water resource management by creating diffuse local management capacity. Coupling IWRM with PES could harness the best features of participatory watershed management and market efficiency for environmental stewardship. However, the policy implications and an implementation strategy for such a conjunction are unexplored in the Canadian Prairies context.
Our research, funded by the Max Bell Foundation, provides best-practice guidance to policy-makers for integrating payments for ecological goods and services with watershed-based IWRM, and is a seminal exploration of these issues in a Western Canadian context.
In the first stage of this research, IWRM and Payments for Ecosystem Services: International Case Summary Research, we compiled international best practices in IWRM and highlighted the potential for PES as an incentive-based policy instrument. An institutional capacity analysis of the Canadian Prairie Provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba) will inform planning and implementation of IWRM in the region. This analysis is reported in The 1% IWRM Solution: Energizing Watershed Sustainability with Ecosystem Services Payments on the Canadian Prairies.
A synthesis report is underway to summarize overall findings and recommendations for the use of payments for ecosystem services for effective IWRM on the Canadian Prairies.
