Source-to-sea, integrated water resources management, and integrated coastal management approaches: integrative, complementary, or competing?

Mitigation, adaptation, environmental protection, and sustainable development on the land and related water bodies are being promoted in a fragmented way. Integrated Water Resources Management and Integrated Coastal Management have been presented as a way to face these problems. The Source-to-sea approach has recently emerged proposing a new water governance and management framework. This research aimed to understand the Source-to-sea approach and identify its relationships and convergences with the approaches of Integrated Water Resources Management and Integrated Coastal Management and answer the question of whether they are integrative, complementary, or competitive. Content analysis was used as part of the investigation method so that it was possible to identify the intentions and perceptions of the concepts, principles, and dimensions adopted by each approach. The classification of elements resulted in 8 categories. Based on Leopold’s matrix, we created a base matrix to analyze the relationships between the approaches. The S2S approach integrates and, at the same time, complements Integrated Water Resources Management and Integrated Coastal Management. For the eight categories, Source-to-sea was fully committed to 6 of them. Integrated Water Resources Management was fully committed to 5 of them. And Integrated Coastal Management was fully committed to only 3 of them. The Source-to-sea approach brings new elements, revitalizes some methods, and strengthens the governance and management structure of freshwater and marine water resources, enabling a new vision in the continuum where Integrated Water Resources Management and Integrated Coastal Management are part of the process within a new perspective.