Jamie McEvoy

Adapting Across Boundaries: Climate Change, Social Learning, and Resilience in the U.S.–Mexico Border Region

The spatial and human dimensions of climate change are brought into relief at international borders where climate change poses particular challenges. This article explores “double exposure” to climatic and globalization processes for the U.S.–Mexico border region, where rapid urbanization, industrialization, and agricultural intensification result in vulnerability to water scarcity as the primary climate change concern. For portions of the western border within the North American monsoon climate regime, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects temperature increases of 2 to 4°C by midcentury and up to 3 to 5°C by 2100, with possible decreases of 5 to 8 percent in precipitation. Like the climate and water drivers themselves, proposed societal responses can also be regionalized across borders. Nevertheless, binational responses are confronted by a complex institutional landscape. The coproduction of science and policy must be situated in the context of competing institutional jurisdictions and legitimacy claims. Adaptation to climate change is conventionally understood as more difficult at international borders, yet regionalizing adaptive responses could also potentially increase resilience. We assess three cases of transboundary collaboration in the Arizona–Sonora region based on specific indicators that contribute importantly to building adaptive capacity. We conclude that three key factors can increase resilience over the long term: shared social learning, the formation of binational “communities of practice” among water managers or disaster-relief planners, and the coproduction of climate knowledge.

Water security and adaptive management in the Arid Americas

Societal use of freshwater, ecosystems’ dependence on water, and hydroclimatic processes interact dynamically. Changes in any of these subsystems can cause unpredictable feedback, resulting in water insecurity for humans and ecosystems. By drawing on resilience theory, we extend current productive–destructive framings of water security to better address societal–ecosystem–hydroclimatic (SEH) interactions, dynamics, and uncertainties that drive insecurity but also offer response opportunities. Strengthening water security in this sense requires strategies that (1) conceptually and practically interlink SEH subsystems; (2) recognize extreme conditions and thresholds; and (3) plan for water security via structured exchanges between researchers and decision makers in ways that account for institutions and governance frameworks. Through scrutiny of case evidence from water-scarce regions in western North America and the Central Andes, we assert that ensuring water security requires adaptive management (interactive planning that accounts for uncertainties, initiates responses, and iteratively assesses outcomes). Researchers and stakeholders from these regions are pursuing a multiyear series of workshops that promote science-based decision making while factoring in the political implications of water planning. This study briefly reviews an emerging water security initiative for the arid Americas that aims to enhance understanding of adaptive approaches to strengthen water security. Finally, by synthesizing efforts in the arid Americas, we offer insights for other water-insecure regions.

Gendered Mobility and Morality in a South-Eastern Mexican Community: Impacts of Male Labour Migration on the Women Left Behind

Abstract Based on research conducted in a migrant-sending community in south-eastern Mexico, we find that male out-migration has forced women to take on labour tasks that are associated with new spatial and mobility patterns. While these patterns have potential for increased empowerment for women, they also call the women’s morality into question, resulting in a policing of the women’s behaviour, and a simultaneous restriction of their mobility, by themselves and others. Therefore, we find male labour out-migration has resulted in contradictory changes in women’s mobility, with ambiguous results for women’s gender empowerment.

Defining ecological drought for the 21st century

DECEMBER 2017 AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY | THE RISING RISK OF DROUGHT. Droughts of the twenty-first century are characterized by hotter temperatures, longer duration, and greater spatial extent, and are increasingly exacerbated by human demands for water. This situation increases the vulnerability of ecosystems to drought, including a rise in drought-driven tree mortality globally (Allen et al. 2015) and anticipated ecosystem transformations from one state to another—for example, forest to a shrubland (Jiang et al. 2013). When a drought drives changes within ecosystems, there can be a ripple effect through human communities that depend on those ecosystems for critical goods and services (Millar and Stephenson 2015). For example, the “Millennium Drought” (2002–10) in Australia caused unanticipated losses to key services provided by hydrological ecosystems in the Murray–Darling basin—including air quality regulation, waste treatment, erosion prevention, and recreation. The costs of these losses exceeded AUD

Defending dissensus: participatory governance and the politics of water measurement in Montana’s Yellowstone River Basin

800 million, as resources were spent to replace these services and adapt to new drought-impacted ecosystems (Banerjee et al. 2013). Despite the high costs to both nature and people, current drought research, management, and policy perspectives often fail to evaluate how drought affects ecosystems and the “natural capital” they provide to human communities. Integrating these human and natural dimensions of drought is an essential step toward addressing the rising risk of drought in the twenty-first century. Part of the problem is that existing drought definitions describing meteorological drought impacts (agricultural, hydrological, and socioeconomic) view drought through a human-centric lens and do not fully address the ecological dimensions of drought.

Desalination and water security in the US–Mexico border region: assessing the social, environmental and political impacts

ABSTRACT The role of a particular aspect of collaboration, dissensus, in stimulating critical reconsideration of ‘prior appropriation’, a historically hegemonic condition related to water rights in the western United States, is examined via a collaborative planning effort in Montana. Consensual support for a water-use measuring proposal was undermined by strong libertarian resistance to governmental regulation, and an unwavering embrace of the status quo. However, based on insights from scholars engaged in the ‘post-political’ dimensions of contemporary forms of rule – dissensus – understood as the manifestation of consensus-forestalling disagreement articulated between oppositional voices – is revealed as a condition to be actively nurtured, rather than purged. This case reveals how dissensus can open discursive spaces for hegemony-disrupting modes of inquiry, alternative perspectives, and innovative possibilities, even among sanctioned participant voices operating within otherwise established, depoliticized governing arenas. The study thus deepens our understanding of the complex political dynamics of participatory water planning.

Assessing the Long-term Impacts of Water Quality Outreach and Education Efforts on Agricultural Landowners

ABSTRACT In the western US–Mexico border region, both countries’ authorities look to desalination as a means to meet increased demands for dwindling supplies. In addition to several existing or planned desalination plants, plans exist to develop projects along Mexico’s coasts to convert seawater into freshwater primarily for conveyance and consumption in the United States. Even though desalination systems have the potential to increase water supply in the region, there are associated consequences, costs and constraints. To understand the impacts of such binational desalination systems, this paper assesses, through a water-security framework, the case of a proposed desalination plant on the Upper Gulf of California. The analysis suggests that for binational desalination systems, there are several key areas of impact against which the benefits of increased water supply must be weighed.

Shipping water across the US–Mexico border: international governance dimensions of desalination for export

Abstract We assess the long-term effectiveness of outreach and education efforts associated with a water quality improvement project in a watershed located in northern Utah, USA. Conducted 15 years after the original project began, our research examines the lasting impacts of different extension activities on landowners’ motivations to participate and their awareness and understanding of the water quality problem. Data were gathered by reviewing annual project reports, interviewing project staff about outreach and education efforts, and conducting in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a majority of the farmers and ranchers who participated in the project. The findings suggest that landowners were motivated to participate in the programme more by practical farm and household considerations and available cost-share opportunities than by particular environmental concerns. Previous relationships between farmers and government programme staff and one-on-one visits with landowners played an important role in their decisions to participate, while demonstration projects and peer-to-peer social diffusion processes played a much smaller role than expected. Although participants had a good grasp of the project goals, they did not have a strong sense of ownership of the water quality problem. These results suggest that education and outreach approaches centred only on the environmental dimensions of conservation projects may be insufficient to motivate changes in conservation behaviour. The results also suggest that conventional outreach strategies often did not have their presumed impact on landowners.

CHANGE: Climate and hydrology academic network for governance and the environment

ABSTRACT New public–private desalination projects along the Mexico–United States boundary have the potential to strengthen water security in this arid region. International bulk water commerce in this region is unprecedented and constrained by existing international agreements and regulations. This problem is examined from a multilevel governance perspective, focusing on two desalination projects with near-term export potential in Rosarito, Baja California, and Puerto Peñasco, Sonora. These projects add to the array of agencies and procedures in binational water management but will not displace the International Boundary and Water Commission, which is sure to have a role in managing such projects.

Discourse and desalination: Potential impacts of proposed climate change adaptation interventions in the Arizona-Sonora border region

what: Twenty-three academic researchers and agency specialists from Canada, the United States, and Mexico met to initiate a research coordination and knowledge exchange network for climate, water, and policy issues in North America’s transboundary regions. when: 5–6 March 2009 were: Mexico City, D.F., Mexico r ecent research shows profound changes underway in climate and hydrology and their effects on ecosystems and water resources. Along international borders, climate, water, and governance interact at multiple levels, increasing the complexity of managing water and natural resources. Moreover, the effective use of climatological and hydrological information particular to the border areas is constrained by a lack of understanding between scientists and decision makers and by regulatory and legal constraints. Motivated by these concerns, Mexican, American, and Canadian climate specialists, social scientists, and agency representatives attending a workshop on environmental change proposed a collegial North American knowledge network to better infuse climate, water, and policy science into transboundary decision making. Participants stressed the need for enhanced information sharing, cross scientific and broader interdisciplinary dialogue, and integrated studies that relate individual actions to cumulative impacts. Their ultimate goal is to create robust, cooperative water management, policies, and governance that address climate variability and change to ensure secure water for continued economic development and environmental health in Mexico, the United States, and Canada’s border regions. The workshop also resulted in mechanisms for research coordination through the Climate and Hydrology Academic Network for Governance and the Environment (CHANGE). Better research coordination is a step toward improved international relations based on sustainable management of shared resources and cooperative economic development. This summary recounts the workshop’s primary initiatives and relays the recommendations and key strategies to ensure the network’s development. Workshop presentations are available online (www.environment. arizona.edu/change/workshops/climate-relatedwater-constraints/presentations). AffiliAtions : Garfin and MceVoy—The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona; Lee—Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada; MaGana—Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Coyoacan, Mexico; Stewart—University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada; roLfe—University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, British Columbia, Canada Corresponding Author : Gregg Garfin, The University of Arizona, 845 N. Park Ave., Ste. 532, Tucson, AZ 85721 E-mail: gmgarfin@email.arizona.edu