Pulwarty, Roger S.

Stauber, Leah

Varady, Robert

English

Colorado Law

University of Colorado Law SchoolColorado Law Scholarly CommonsAllocating and Managing Water for a SustainableFuture: Lessons from Around the World (SummerConference, June 11-14)Getches-Wilkinson Center Conferences,Workshops, and Hot Topics6-11-2002Transboundary Watersheds: ChangingEnvironments and Streams of Thought [abstract]Roger S. PulwartyRobert VaradyLeah StauberFollow this and additional works at: http://scholar.law.colorado.edu/allocating-and-managing-water-for-sustainable-futurePart of the Natural Resources and Conservation Commons, Natural Resources Management andPolicy Commons, Transnational Law Commons, Water Law Commons, and the Water ResourceManagement CommonsReproduced with permission of the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment (formerly the Natural ResourcesLaw Center) at the University of Colorado Law School.Citation InformationPulwarty, Roger S.; Varady, Robert; and Stauber, Leah, "Transboundary Watersheds: Changing Environments and Streams of Thought[abstract]" (2002). Allocating and Managing Water for a Sustainable Future: Lessons from Around the World (Summer Conference, June11-14).http://scholar.law.colorado.edu/allocating-and-managing-water-for-sustainable-future/44    Roger S. Pulwarty, Robert Varady & Leah Stauber, Transboundary Watersheds: Changing Environments and Streams of Thought [abstract], in ALLOCATING AND MANAGING WATER FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: LESSONS FROM AROUND THE WORLD (Natural Res. Law Ctr., Univ. of Colo. Sch. of Law 2002).  Reproduced with permission of the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment (formerly the Natural Resources Law Center) at the University of Colorado Law School.  Transboundary Watersheds: Changing Environments and Streams of ThoughtBy: Roger S. Pulwarty, Robert Varady, and Leah StauberRoger S. PulwartyNational Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministrationCIRES216 UCBUniversity of Colorado Boulder, Colorado 80309-0216 Phone: (303) 427-2089 Ext. 103 Fax: (303) 497-6449 E-mail: pulwarty@ogp.noaa.govRobert Varady, Director Leah StauberUdall Center for Studies in Public PolicyUniversity of Arizona, Tucson803 E. First StreetTucson, Arizona 85719Phone: (520) 884-4393E-mail: rvarady@email.arizona.eduE-mail: lstauber@email.arizona.eduRoger S. Pulwarty is the Program Manager for the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. His office has impacts assessments underway in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, the Colorado Plateau, California, and the US Southeast. He is also a Research Scientist in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His interests have focused on: hydroclimatic variability and impacts; societal and environmental vulnerability to climate variations and extremes; and on the role and utilization of scientific information in natural resources and ecological management in the western US, Latin America and the Caribbean. He has served on the National Research Council's Committee on Climate, Ecosystems, Infectious Diseases and Health, the US Global Change Research Program, and as a contributing author to the IPCC Third Assessment. At present he serves on advisory panels for the Organization of American States, the American Metrological Society, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.Robert Varady is deputy director and director of environmental programs at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at The University of Arizona. For a full bio, see his paper elsewhere in this session.Leah Stauber is a Program Assistant at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and an MA candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. She assists with the Udall Center-S AHRA (Sustainability of Semi-Arid Hydrology and Riparian Areas) Cooperative Thrust Area 5, “Water as a Resource: Competition and Conflict, Planning and Policy,” as well as working with Robert Varady on United States-Mexico border issues. Recent work has included interviews with stakeholders in the Verde Valley of north-central Arizona regarding local watershed association formation, and interests include community participation in resource management and environmental justice.a b s t r a c tWilier is a “fugitive" resource in the sense that it flows naturally from one place to another, from one reserve to another (eg. groundwater to surface), and from one physical state (solid, liquid and gas) to another. Titus “trans-boundary" can mean many things including: transitions from wet to arid zones, from upstream to downstream, from one country or province to the next etc. The Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes (1992) defines “transboundary waters" to mean “any surface or ground waters which mark, cross or are located on the boundaries between two or more states." Emerging issues in water resources emanate from three categories of problems: (1) transboundary water availability; (2) transboundary groundwater allocation, management, and conservation: and (3) transboundary water quality. Transboundary fluctuations and changes in river flow can be attributed to (1) climate variations and change on several timescales, and, (2) physical and biological transformations of basin hydrology including increased storage, diversions, and landscape changes.Researchers and practitioners have identified numerous factors underlying international disputes involving river flows, including: the variability and uncertainty of supply, interdependencies among users, increasing over-allocation and rising costs, the increasing vulnerability of water quality and aquatic ecosystems to human activities, ways and means of supplying safe water facilities, and the mobilization of financial resources for water development and management. Many of these issues derive from general concerns in water resources management. How these concerns are met is strongly shaped by the choice of the spatial unit within which studies and management actions are conducted, by the way problems have been defined and changed over time, and by who benefits from defining problems in a particular way.In the following discussion the scales of human activities and interactions with several river basins are put in the context of streamflow changes on a range of time and space scales. The conditioning factors on flow variability and change are discussed in general. Three regions, the Nile, the Parana-Paraguay River, and systems on the US-Mexico border, are then selected for detailed illustration. These are described within the many dimensions within which “water" is understood from its hydrological and economic through its environmental and cultural contexts.While governing institutions that more closely correspond with the physical water system can help to assure appropriate consideration of efficiency and equity, domestic policy can pose major institutional barriers to international agreements and even lead to counterintuitive conclusions about management across national or state borders. Ultimately, the main tasks in the ioreseeable future will be how to share common but variable water resources in a catchment area between upstream and downstream users, between various sectors, between rural and urban areas, between preservation of functioning ecosystems and more direct tangible needs. Engaging the many dimensions of transboundary river flow requires, more than ever, the need to understand these “regions" as integrators of social, cultural, climatic, economic, and ecological histories and networks, that help to shape shared community interests and values.

Transboundary Watersheds: Changing Environments and Streams of Thought [abstract]

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Transboundary Watersheds: Changing Environments and Streams of Thought [abstract]

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