Integrated Water Resources Management and Payments for Ecosystem Services

Participatory watershed management and markets

Integrated water resources management (IWRM) is clearly 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 jurisdictions often confused.

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 completely unexplored in the prairie context.

Our research, funded by the Max Bell Foundation, will provide 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.