Border Water: The Politics of U.S. –Mexico Transboundary Water Management, 1945–2015 by Stephen Paul Mumme (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Border Water: The Politics of U.S. –Mexico Transboundary Water Management, 1945–2015 by Stephen Paul Mumme Alicia M. Dewey Border Water: The Politics of U.S. –Mexico Transboundary Water Management, 1945–2015. By Stephen Paul Mumme. (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2023. Pp. 432. Notes, bibliography, index.) In Border Water, Stephen Paul Mumme, professor of political science at Colorado State University, has produced the first comprehensive study of water management and diplomacy along the U.S.–Mexico border in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The book explores the context, historical development, and implementation of the 1944 U.S.–Mexico Treaty on the Utilization of the Waters of the Colorado, the Tijuana, and the Rio Grande (the 1944 Treaty). It also details the operation of the International Water and Boundary Commission (IWBC) and the involvement of other organizations in a variety of water issues along the border, especially those relating to sanitation and river ecology. The book traces the evolution of border water politics "from a relatively closed system of reclamation-driven policies and stakeholders" designed to spur agricultural expansion to a system with a variety of goals, participants, and practices, including a focus on sanitation, provision of municipal water, and maintenance of ecological health in the region (5). Mumme argues that the story of developing and negotiating allocation of border water since 1945 has been "an epic tussle" between the United States and Mexico over perhaps the most crucial natural resource in some of the most arid lands in North America (4). Throughout the book, Mumme pays attention to international and domestic [End Page 239] politics in both countries as well as social movements, such as the late nineteenth-century irrigation movement in the United States and various environmental movements later in the twentieth century, which have influenced water diplomacy and management. Notably, he found that the countries have generally not viewed the border as an integrated watershed but rather have focused on their own national interests and thus negotiated from that standpoint. This has been somewhat problematic for Mexico due to that country's weaker political and economic position vis á vis its more powerful northern neighbor, but Mumme points out that the existence of "downstream dependencies" in both countries (especially Mexico on the Colorado and the U.S. on the Rio Grande) have given Mexico more leverage in negotiating over water allocation (11). Politics within each country have influenced and sometimes complicated water diplomacy. Mexico's approach to water management is highly centralized within the federal government, with most authority vested in the Comisión Nacional de Agua. By contrast, water management in the United States is decentralized, with overlapping and shared jurisdiction among local irrigation districts, municipalities, states, and federal agencies like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of the Interior. Groups of developers, environmentalists, energy companies, bankers, and citizens have historically influenced water policy as well, usually more so in the United States than in Mexico. Importantly, Mumme discovered that the countries have kept water issues mostly separate from other binational issues such as immigration, narcotics, trade, and energy policy and that conflict in these areas has only had limited influence on water diplomacy. The book is organized chronologically and partially thematically primarily as a narrative explaining how water policy has evolved between 1945 and 2015 along the U.S.–Mexico border. Mumme explicitly states that the book is not a "formal analysis of U.S–Mexico water relations" (19). It is divided into three parts: (I) "Development and Consolidation of Transboundary Water Management" (beginning with the 1944 Treaty and ending in 1973); (II) "The Environmental Era" (covering the years between 1973–2015); and (III) "Lessons Learned and the Future of U.S–Mexico Transboundary Water Management." Each chapter in parts I and II begins with a discussion of "metapolitics," or the status of binational relations in realms other than water policy, before exploring the key conflicts that arose and agreements reached between the two countries in each period over various water-related problems and how the broader context of metapolitics affected water policy. In part III, Mumme provides an overview of binational water relations from 1945 to...