Robert G. Varady

Ecosystem services across borders: a framework for transboundary conservation policy

International political borders rarely coincide with natural ecological boundaries. Because neighboring countries often share ecosystems and species, they also share ecosystem services. For example, the United States and Mexico share the provisioning service of groundwater provided by the All-American Canal in California; the regulating service of agave crop pollination by long-nosed bats; and the aesthetic value of the North American monarch butterfly, a cultural service. We use the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) to elucidate how drivers in one country can affect ecosystem services and human well-being in other countries. We suggest that the concept of ecosystem services, as articulated by the MA, could be used as an organizing principle for transboundary conservation, because it meets many of the criteria for successful transboundary policy. It would frame conservation in terms of mutual interests between countries, consider a diversity of stakeholders, and provide a means for linking multiple services and assessing tradeoffs between uses of services.

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.

Openness, Sustainability, and Public Participation: New Designs for Transboundary River Basin Institutions

The worlds transboundary environmental institutions typically are driven from the top, function behind closed doors, disregard sustainability, and rely on technical fixes or regulatory mechanisms. This article compares those approaches, as manifested in various river basin commissions, to a new, more democratic model being tested in the U.S.-Mexico border region. Water factors into many transboundary environmental problems. More than 300 river basins are shared by two or more countries. The authors examine seven international river basin compacts, sketch four common conceptual paradigms, and argue that these models mostly ignore local needs and public inputs and sometimes also fail in their explicit objectives. The border between the United States and Mexico offers a more promising design. There, as a result of the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement, a new, innovative authority, the Border Environmental Cooperation Commission (BECC), has emerged. This institution has been fashioned to protect local interests and to sustain its activities environmentally and financially. We examine how well the BECC has fulfilled its promise of openness, transparency, and binationality, and conclude that properly adapted, the models roots—openness, transparency, capacity building, bottom-up design, and sustainability—could take hold in other transboundary areas.

The U.S.-Mexican Border Environment Cooperation Commission: Collected Perspectives on the First Two Years

Abstract This article assesses the first two years’ activities of the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC), and synthesizes the invited commentary from several BECC observers along both sides of the border. As a framework for assessment, the paper delineates several key elements of BECCs design—namely, its binationality, openness to the public, and the existence of criteria for project certification—that give the institution the potential to promote innovative and sustainable solutions to border environmental degradation. The article then evaluates the commissions effectiveness in implementing these design components, concluding that, although BECC has stumbled occasionally in its first two years, it has made significant progress, demonstrating that it is capable of defining its agenda, implementing rules and procedures, devising certification criteria, and moving ahead to approve proposals.

Science-Policy Dialogues for Water Security: Addressing Vulnerability and Adaptation to Global Change in the Arid Americas

www.EnvironmEntmagazinE.org voLUmE 54 nUmBEr 3 Climate change and watersupply uncertainty coupled with mounting human demands for water are straining the availability and quality of freshwater in much of the world. These twin forces cause a palpable rise in societal vulnerability, here considered as susceptibility to adverse effects of global environmental change.1 The vulnerability of water supplies (or, water vulnerability) places human communities at risk for exposure,2 or change,3 and thereby creates huge adaptation challenges. The actions being taken to reduce risks and capitalize on opportunities are considered adaptation or adaptive strategies.4 The most sensitive and vulnerable communities are those that face the greatest exposure and are most limited in their capacity to adapt. Rapidly growing and ever wealthier urban populations, expanding agribusinesses, diverse industries, extensive mining, power generation, and tourism often deprive water from or degrade its quality for use by marginalized populations of smallholder farmers and the urban poor, as well as for ecosystems along streams, lakes, and coasts recognized as biodiversity hotspots in the arid landscape. The arid5 Americas—as characterized by the southwestern United States, northwestern Mexico, north-central Chile and Argentina, and northeastern Brazil—manifest the just-described challenges especially well.6 This article focuses on two areas where our research team has been developing science-policy adaptation strategies: (1) the Sonora-Arizona drylands shared by Mexico and the United States (See map at right), and (2) the drylands east and west of the Central Andes in Chile and Argentina (see map, page 32). In these areas water remains acutely limited even as drought and flood extremes increase, ecosystems are under growing pressure, and economic globalization drives water demand. These global-change conditions threaten the security of access to water. Yet the foregoing conditions prevail—with little regard for constraints to supply, insufficient understanding of vulnerability, and inadequate attention to adaptive measures.7 To the extent that such problems are attributable to human agency,8 there is evidence that effective policies and actions can alleviate some of the harm.9 Our article describes two interactive Science-Policy Dialogues for Water Security:

Hydrosolidarity and beyond: can ethics and equity find a place in today's water resource management?

The notion of hydrosolidarity has permeated international discourses on water management, but it has received little comprehensive review. This paper traces the intellectual origins of hydrosolidarity and it explores how the concept has been applied by water scholars, organizations and in global water venues, like World Water Forums. Evolving conceptions and meanings of hydrosolidarity are presented and its kinship to related, sometimes oppositional terms, untangled. In particular, it explores how hydrosolidarity has evolved to serve as a socio-ethical annex to integrated water resources management. The paper concludes by examining some critiques and addressing the potential of hydrosolidarity in water management.

Upper San Pedro Basin: fostering collaborative binational watershed management

Successful binational planning and management of water resources is a complex process dependent on informed decision‐making across diverse economic, social and political sectors. Additional technical and scientific information is often required as a part of this process. A critical factor in this process is how effectively social and physical scientists can help build collaboration and trust among stakeholders, water and land managers, and policy‐makers. Within the international San Pedro River Basin, disparities between Mexico and the USA regarding economic development and political orientation, combined with a highly variable and complex physical setting, suggest that the successful engagement of scientists with communities and stakeholders will be essential for addressing challenges in water management. Based upon concepts associated with collective action theory, adaptive management and conflict resolution, the present paper proposes a process for fostering collaborative binational water management in basins such as the San Pedro that span international borders.

Public - private partnerships as catalysts for community-based water infrastructure development: the Border WaterWorks program in Texas and New Mexico colonias

Increased awareness of shortcomings in both provision and maintenance of public services is triggering new approaches to policymaking and service delivery. Conventional debates over public versus private service provision obscure the multiple configurations possible. We consider the effectiveness and desirability of an alternative approach to public-service provision of water and wastewater services, specifically the Border Waterworks program, which has helped deliver water-related services to economically disadvantaged communities (colonias) along the US – Mexico border. We explore some issues that emerge when nonprofit organizations take on functions of governments and service providers, and examine the conditions under which the provision of water and wastewater infrastructure can be advanced by nonprofit organizations. We conclude that the general effectiveness of Border Waterworks was thanks to its ability to adapt to local circumstances and respond to situations as they arose in the context of the numerous problems in colonias. We also conclude that nonprofit providers are most effective when they serve as catalysts that assist the public sector rather than when they provide public-service infrastructure on their own.

Global Water Initiatives: What Do the Experts Think?

This paper discusses institutions known as “global water initiatives.” The phenomenon reflects a post-World War II trend toward collective approaches to resolving multinational issues in general and common-pool resources in particular. These initiatives, which arguably have become the dominant model for international water-resources management, have proliferated because of a belief that water transcends national boundaries and must be managed cooperatively, equitably, and using the best science. The paper reviews the evolution of different types of global water initiatives and seeks to evaluate their effectiveness. Via a pair of surveys administered to approximately 120 leaders and prominent observers, the authors query intellectual and political currents, organization and governance, institutional overlap, and overall significance. The central question addressed is whether the “world of water” would have been much different if these initiatives did not exist. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, this paper presents a preliminary analysis of some of the key questions. The findings should be of interest to scientists, social scientists, lawyers, diplomats, managers, and especially decision makers at all levels.1