the overall objective is neither to rank countries nor to determine an optimal model of governance but rather to identify categories of countries facing similar challenges in order to facilitate peer review dialogues and to learn from experiences within the lac region when seeking appropriate policy responses in the countries surveyed respondents from central administrations most often from water directorates were asked to rank a series of water governance challenges from not important to very important according to a set of indicators attempting to illustrate each of the multilevel governance gaps though several elements contribute to the seven broad governance challenges previously described one proxy indicator per gap was selected to facilitate the analysis