The Link between Ecosystem Services and Human Wellbeing in the Implementation of the European Water Framework Directive: Assessing Four River Basins in Europe

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors present important research about connecting modern perspectives of water resources management with each other, and with the European Water Framework Directive (WFD). The paper is well written, but I propose to improve the scientific soundness, because some parts seem to be not completely documented and also I feel that some terms are not used very precisely. Some comments:

1) The title of the paper should be changed. There is not much to find about IWRM, not even in the conclusions. Better would be something like "The Link between Ecosystem Services and Human Wellbeing in the Implementation of the European Water Framework Directive: Assessing Four River Basins in Europe." Using WFD is better, it is not like IWRM=WFD. The paper deals with WFD.

2) l 21, and later: climate change is not investigated by the authors and it is not subject of WFD. I agree what they expect from climate change but is it required to refer to it here?

3) Literature research was a bit short and can be improved. Some aspects: The first paragraph gives mostly institutional sources. More scientific papers should be cited here. Jax & Heink is, in my opinion, not a suitable source about Ecosystem Services. There are a lot of peer reviewed papers available.

4) l 88-89: could be removed or rephrased.

5) l 97 ff: here, the authors could cite the DPSIR scheme of OECD, EEA and relate that with fig 3. It has been applied for WFD to describe cause-effect chains, better networks. The pressure - status - impact relationship is very similar, and follows a similar policy approach, as pressure - ES - HWB. I feel that ES - HWB is even more human centric. It might be discussed in the paper with citations, because the nassessment presented here claims some novelty and a comparison of 4 rbmp has rarely been done that way.

6) l 108: more general remark: here, and on some other places, it reads like a project report. The findings should be presented as research efforts of general nature and the project can be mentioned under funding and/or acknowledgements, also citations

7) l 125: is the literature review available? Please cite. If you mean the one of your paper, it does not need to be mentioned.

8) l 144: HWB occurs here, is that human wellbeing? Previously, HW was used. Please clarify, define when it occurs first and use consistently.

9) l 157: achieve

10) l 164: please give the equation and rational how to calculate the efficiency index. I have not seen a clear documentation, but that is required for reproducing the results. Later, the index shows to be one of the core results of that study.

11): table 1: the ES and WB terms as used in fig 1 and 2 are not used here. Please provid a "translation" or explain how your terms are refereed to the terms used in the theoretical section.

12) table 1: some terms are not used consistently, e.g. "Water for Drinking" and "Drinking Water", "Recreational Activities" and "Sports and Tourism". If there is a difference, it could be made more clear, otherwise use the same terms. Maybe table 1 looks better if formattedas  horizontal. 

13) l 183 ff: when describing the single basins, there should not be many repetitions of informatiion shown in the table 1. It is better to strengthen the comparative analysis in the text.

14) l 220 "may in have"?

15) l 236: plesse give a citation and figure for the population growth - in many parts of Europe, population is shrinking

16) l 239: can the Sava flood event be explained by climate change? Typically, climate change deals with changed frequencies of events but single events cannot easily linked with climate change. Please give sources or a scientific proof for that linkage. Generally, people might be biased by the flood event if questions were asked shortly after. So it is good to mention here, but also discuss if the results of the study are somehow affected.

17) l 243 ff: that paragraph is more introduction, please move or remove.

18) l 287: "that "duplicated

19) l 298 and other places: no surprise to me. floods are not part of the WFD. There was a flood risk directive published later because the EU "forgot" floods as part of water management. I propose to leave out the topic of floods from the whole paper, because the linkage of WFD and the flood directive is required to di such analysis. It is very clear and can be expected that the PoM does not adress flooding. Even more there can be measures for improving hydro-morphology, which have negative impact on flood protection. In my opinion, the flood topic required to analyse the PoM of both directives, otherwise a wrong picture would be given.

20) table 3: how was the % coverage per HW factor determined?

21) fig 4 to 8: leave out flooding as it is no topic of WFD

22) l 400: explains why flooding can not be included in that study

23) l 401: is it really "water quality"? Nor "ecological quality"? Both are different. The novelty of WFD is ecological quality.

24) l 446: "in for"?

25) some bad formatting at the end of text

Author Response

Many thanks for the detailed review. the comments have been taken on board within the revised version of the manuscript as detailed in the attached doc

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper takes advantage of ecosystem services as the lens that makes linkage to human well-being. The paper is well motivated and developed. While the research question is not new and method is modest, it brings four case studies which could be of interest to some reseachers from policy analysis domain. 

There is a major issue for the methodology section to which the authors should address in their revised paper. The authors mentioned that literature review approach and stakeholder surveys were combined to identify pressures, ES, and their linkage to well-being.However, they failed to give detailed information about the samples of literature reviewed as well as of stakeholders been involved.The authors need to give more explanations of how these process was conducted in a clearer way, e.g. how stakeholders were identified, how many were involved, how many workshops were conducted, what the feedbacks are between results of literature review and stakeholders' opinions, etc. In addition, the authors mentioned that content analysis was also used in the study, but there is no clear explanation of how it has been done. 

There is an emerging debate in "nature’s contributions to people" vs "ecosystem services". It would be good if the authors can also put some thoughts on this to enrich the background information of this study. 

You may find insightful opinions from "Peterson, G., Harmáčková, Z., Meacham, M., Queiroz, C., Jiménez-Aceituno, A., Kuiper, J., ... & Bennett, E. (2018). Welcoming different perspectives in IPBES:“Nature’s contributions to people” and “Ecosystem services”. Ecology and Society, 23(1)", and 

"Díaz, S., Pascual, U., Stenseke, M., Martín-López, B., Watson, R. T., Molnár, Z., ... & Polasky, S. (2018). Assessing nature's contributions to people. Science, 359(6373), 270-272".

Author Response

Many thanks for the valuable comments. Both the methodology and literature have been strengthened taking on board your comments (eg number of stakeholders and workshops, identification etc), as well as the suggestions on literature provided.  In addition comments from reviewer 1 have also been incorporated which address a number of the issues you have raised. 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, thanks for the improvement of the paper and the clarifications!

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks for the materials which improved the quality of the paper.