Droughts and floods create controversies over water resources and test the capacity of authorities at different scales to defend their interests. This is particularly visible in Federal rivers, which are characterized by the crossing of resource and political jurisdictions and the organization of resource management into nested but still autonomous venues of decision making. Local authorities in federal countries and rivers are vulnerable to decisions made at the national and international levels; however, they can also learn to promote their interests across levels of governance and jurisdictions.
Irrigation systems are a paradigmatic example of local water use jurisdictions, which are managed in many parts of the world by autonomous irrigation associations. Much is knows about the capacity of irrigation associations to self-organize and cope with external threats to their sustainability. Less is known, however, about their ability to navigate multi-level political opportunity structures to promote their interests against those threats. This paper aims to start filling that gap by looking at drought and flood adaptations by irrigation associations in the Lower Rio Grande, Mexico.
The recent federalization of water management in Mexico makes the Lower Rio Grande and some of its tributaries particularly suitable for the purpose of this study. While the basics of the multi-level water governance system in the country are well known (i.e., a water act, a federal water agency, river basin authorities…), there are still considerable institutional gaps that call for further understanding. Additionally, water management in the Rio Grande is subject to cooperation and conflict dynamics at both the local, national and international levels, which make the understanding of cross-scale linkages particularly pertinent. The increased severity of drought and flood events in the Rio Grande over the last decades has notably increased the public visibility of those dynamics.
The paper consists of a comparative case study of drought and flood responses, as developed by a selection of irrigation associations in the area of study. The response cases were selected based on their location along the Rio Grande. The main sources of data are a review of media documents and elite interviews. The analysis of cases is used to make some propositions about capacity for collective action, the structure of political opportunities and water governance.
