Ford School professor Jenna Bednar, along with Michigan professors Andrew Gronewold, Marjorie Cort, Vianey Rueda, Michael Moore, and Jon Allan, published a report in the journal Nature Communications investigating threats to continental-scale transboundary water treaties, key attributes of these treaties and their vulnerabilities in the coming years.
"Continental transboundary water treaties and compacts face imminent threats related to climate change, migration, and increasing anthropogenic demand for freshwater," they wrote. Millions rely on these freshwater supplies, such as the Great Lakes, the Colorado River, the Rio Grande, their basins, and the Ogallala and Cambrian-Ordovician aquifers, which lie across national and subnational boundaries.
However, they wrote that recent weather and changes in water levels "may foreshadow a future for the continental northeast characterized by pronounced hydrologic extremes." In addition, they said that many global water supplies are diminishing. Along with flooding in the northeast, this is "setting the stage for a North American continental water crisis," they said.
They discussed how the cities of Joliet, Illinois, and Waukesha, Wisconsin, have both switched their water sources in recent years from an aquifer and groundwater to the Great Lakes because of depletion or natural contamination of water. They said, "These recent events are particularly paradoxical, if not troubling, in light of speculation by demographers that water abundance in the upper midwest may soon turn the region into a climate refuge."
"There are imminent calls, for example, to renegotiate the Colorado River Compact amidst that basin’s ongoing" issues, they wrote. "Its longevity may hinge on the ability of a third party—the US Government—to reconcile interstate disputes" and correct for past overallocation. However, in the case of the 1944 Treaty on the Rio Grande, they said there was no third party to help negotiate, and the power imbalance between "the US and Mexico limits the capacity of the Treaty’s “Minute” process to fully accommodate diminishing regional water supplies associated with climate change," they wrote.
"It is unlikely, however, that the Great Lakes Compact could survive if this [political] stability were to devolve," they wrote.
Recommendations for stakeholders:
- Convene a summit of key compact and treaty organizational leadership to assess vulnerabilities.
- Review the US Supreme Court decision in Texas vs New Mexico and Colorado to understand how it may influence other compacts and agreements.
- Conduct further research on the long-term consequences of unmitigated water use under increasing climate-induced disruption.
"We are advocating for the long-term health and coincident sustainability of multiple continental freshwater systems by urging policymakers to clearly articulate and reiterate the history of existing compacts, and to address their strengths and weaknesses, within continental and global water resources management contexts," the authors wrote.
