Corruption and conflicts as barriers to adaptive governance: Water governance in dryland systems in the Rio del Carmen watershed

Abstract

Water governance in the Rio del Carmen watershed has failed to achieve sustainable water use, generating social conflicts, water overexploitation, and grassland loss. This leaves it unable to adapt and learn, to reconcile different stakeholder perspectives and to adequately respond to uncertainty. Adaptive water governance regulates water access through flexible, inclusive and innovative institutions, increasing system adaptive capacity in the face of uncertainty. This is necessary for water-scarce systems since they suffer context-specific exposure to land degradation and climate change. This research focuses on how water governance regulates water access in the Rio del Carmen watershed, Mexico, identifying key legal and institutional features that could increase adaptation and secure water resources in the long-term. 27 semi-structured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders in the watershed, in order to understand the water governance structure and its system dynamics.

Seeking Common Ground in Dryland Systems: Steps Towards Adaptive Water Governance

“…Additionally, as part of their culture and faith, many Mennonites do not believe that groundwater can be overexploited, believing that God will provide unlimited water [36]. Conversely, the results show that although Mexican farmers have increased their agricultural activity to sustain yields (see Section 3.1.2), they also recognise drought and groundwater overexploitation, because they have had to modify their water exploitations and deepen their wells in response to reduced water availability [24].…”

“…As reported in Section 2.1, in the Rio del Carmen watershed, societal stressors have caused 16 conflict incidents in two years, consisting of social clashes, dam destruction, and the burning of crops, illustrating the fragile context of conflict dynamics [33]. Nevertheless, societal stressors are not exclusively linked to resource scarcity, as they are institutionally embedded in, e.g., intensive agriculture's externalities or the adoption of corrupt practices [24]. This is similar to the situation in Southeast Asia, where forestry, water, and mining sectors have generated several societal stressors, e.g., human rights violations and unequal distributions of costs and benefits, resulting in conflicts and violent rebellions [75].…”

“…[39]. Groundwater sources consist of 3 main aquifers that are overexploited: Santa Clara located upstream, and Flores-Magon-Villa Ahumada and Laguna de Patos, both of which are located downstream [24]. On the surface, the River Santa Clara later becomes the River Carmen, while in terms of hydraulic infrastructure, there is Las Lajas dam [40].…”

“…These acts of protest included the occupation of government offices, highways, and even aggression against government officials, until finally CONAGUA agreed to work with them in the identification and demolition of illegal water wells and dams placed to divert the flow of the river [48,53]. However, some members of El Barzon also began to burn crops that were being irrigated with illegal water exploitations [24,53]. At this point, Mennonites demanded that the Governor of Chihuahua and the President of Mexico stop the aggression against their community, arguing that CONAGUA should also inspect downstream Conflicts between upstream (Mennonites) and downstream (traditional Mexican) farmers started in the Rio Del Carman watershed in 2010, when water levels in downstream groundwater exploitations started to drop considerably, along with reduced water runoff in the River Carmen [48].…”

“…AWG has the potential to increase human adaptive capacity to better face non-linear and complex environmental changes [23]. To do so, the AWG conceptual framework establishes: (1) a legally binding authority and accountability to stakeholders; (2) that governance should operate with the institutional principles of flexibility, collaboration, iteration, and subsidiarity; and (3) that financial, technical and administrative resources are necessary for its sustainability [24]. In a dryland SES context with highly variable ecological conditions, such as extreme droughts and torrential rains [24,25], and social complexities, such as conflicts over water access [3,4], AWG is paramount to allowing SES functioning to continue [26].…”