Resolving water conflicts in the American West

Abstract

The American West is defined first and foremost by aridity, scarcity, and variability of water resources. In response to this geographic imperative, the region has evolved a robust menu of legal, institutional, and community-based approaches to managing water and conflicts at local, state, and national levels. While far from perfect, this framework may offer lessons to other regions throughout the world that are increasingly faced with water conflicts due to scarcity and variability of water resources. The resulting menu of approaches reflects an adaptive, collaborative, and nested system of governing water resources.

The American West as a social-ecological region: drivers, dynamics and implications for nested social-ecological systems

“…There is a substantial body of human-environment research embedded within the often-taken-forgranted bounds of the West, historically thought of as lands west of the 100th meridian (Wilkinson 1993, Seager et al 2018 for a few research examples, see Brick et al 2001, Robbins et al 2009, Altaweel et al 2015. Various prior research efforts that have attempted to define the West as a distinct region have focused on factors such as water appropriation law, lack of demographic diversity, rurality, or presence of iconic animal species (Nugent 1992, Berry et al 2000, Robbins et al 2009, McKinney and Thorson 2015. Despite these efforts, there has been relatively little effort to analytically demarcate and define the West as a region with consistent social and ecological characteristics, organized by a common set of system variables, and marked by diverse sets of nested dynamics.…”

Dairy Farmers’ Willingness to Adopt Cleaner Production Practices for Water Conservation: A Discrete Choice Experiment in Mejia, Ecuador

“…These results are expected, given the inefficient water use in our study area and the risk of water conflict due to weak water administration. Local universities or NGOs through community engagement programs can play an essential role in helping water users develop cooperative behaviors and resolve conflicts (Handayani et al, 2022;McKinney and Thorson, 2015;Wingfield et al, 2021). In fact, Ecuadorian universities require internships in some of their academic programs.…”

Water rights, river compacts, and legal-policy stationarity in the American West*

“…The argument presented here is that legal and policy stationarities-solidified in western water legal doctrines, institutions, and more importantly, unchanging data-challenge collaborative water compromises and conflict resolution in western states (McKinney and Thorson 2015).…”