Transboundary Water Resources Management in the Upper Rio Grande Basin

The Rio Grande, flowing southward almost 2,000 miles from its headwaters in southern Colorado, drains an area of over 350,000 square miles and is the lifeblood of a semi-arid region supplying water for more than 3.5 million people and for agricultural, recreational, hydropower, and industrial purposes. This paper reports on on-going research regarding the physical and institutional resilience of the Upper Basin of the Rio Grande river management system, from its headwaters, to Fort Quitman, Texas. The work looks at the transboundary issues between the three US basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas, with some attention given to issues concerning the US/Mexico border portion of the Rio Grande. This paper addresses the ability of the Rio Grande system to accommodate stresses induced by a variety of possible future circumstances, including climate change. Several assumptions have guided the research. The first is that the system has a significant degree of flexibility and resilience under existing operating rules, allowing managers to handle additional burdens on the system, be they from present conditions, or from new and unforseen circumstances. A second assumption however is that this resilience is finite and that at some point it will not be possible to accommodate additional stress on the system under present operating rules. In other words, it is possible to conceive of future changes that will be beyond the ability of the managers to cope, while still complying with all of the operating requirements presently in place. This leads to the final assumption that if and when such conditions arise, the rules will have to change at levels above the operational level in order to accommodate the new demands on the Rio Grande.