Climate and Water: Transboundary Challenges in the Americas PDF
Preview Climate and Water: Transboundary Challenges in the Americas
CLIMATE AND WATER ADVANCES IN GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH VOLUME 16 Editor-in-Chief Martin Beniston, Institute of Geography, University of Fribourg, Perolles, Switzerland Editorial Advisory Board B, Allen-Diaz, Department ESPM-Ecosystem Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, CA. U.S.A. R.S. Bradley, Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA. U.S.A. W. Cramer, Department of Global Change and Natural Systems, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany. H.E Diaz, Climate Diagnostics Center; Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, NOAA, Boulder; CO, U.S.A. S. Erkman, Institute for Communication and Analysis of Science and Technology -ICAST, Geneva, Switzerland. M. Lal, Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India. U. Luterbacher, The Graduate Institute of International Studies, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. I. Noble, CRC for Greenhouse Accounting and Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. L. Tessier, Institut Mediterraneen d'Ecologie et Paleoecologie, Marseille, France. E Toth, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria. M.M. Verstraete, Space Applications Institute, EC Joint Research Centre, Ispra (VA), Italy. CLIMATE AND WATER Transboundary Challenges in the Americas Edited by Henry F. Diaz Climate Diagnostics Center, Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, NOM, Boulder, CO, U.S.A. and Barbara J. Morehouse Institute for the Study of Planet Earth, University ofA rizona, Tucson, AZ, U.S.A. KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LONDON A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-90-481-6386-1 ISBN 978-94-015-1250-3 (eBook) DOl 10.1007/978-94-015-1250-3 Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers. P.O. Box 17. 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Sold and distributed in North, Central and South America by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Printed Oil ucidJree p"per All Rights Reserved © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers and copyright holders as specified on appropriate pages within. Softcover reprint of the hardcover I sl edition 2003 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming. recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use hy the purchaser of the work. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments IX Foreword XI Preface Xlll Contributing Authors XVll Section A: Water Policy, Institutions, and Society 1. Climate and Water in Transboundary Contexts: 3 An Introduction Henry F. Diaz and Barbara J. Morehouse 2. Boundaries in Climate-Water Discourse 25 Barbara J. Morehouse 3. Experience and Role of the Organization of American States 41 in Transboundary River Basin Management in Latin America Jorge Rucks 4. Coping with Climate Variability: Municipal Water Agencies 59 Agencies in Southern California Denise Lach, Helen Ingram, and Steve Rayner 5. Impacts of Climate Fluctuations and Climate Changes on the 83 Sustainable Development of the Arid Norte Grande in Chile Hugo Romero and Stephanie Kampf 6. Water Resource Management in Response to El 117 Nifio-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Droughts and Floods: The Case of Ambos Nogales Terry Sprouse and Lisa Farrow Vaughan v VI Climate and Water 7. Transboundary Water Problems as "Jurisdictional 145 Externalities": Increased Economic Efficiency Through Institutional Reforms Charles W Howe 8. Impacts in Mexico of Colorado River Management in the 163 United States: A History of Neglect, A Future of Uncertainty David H. Getches 9. Reservoir Management in the Interior West: 193 The Influence of Climate Variability and Functional Linkages of Water Andrea J. Ray Section B: Climate, Hydrology, and Ecosystem Processes 10. Biomes, River Basins, and Climate Regions: 221 Rational Tools for Water Resources Management Henry F. Diaz 11. The Transboundary Setting of California's Water and 237 Hydropower Systems: Linkages between the Sierra Nevada, Columbia, and Colorado Hydroclimates Daniel R. Cayan, Michael D. Dettinger, Kelly T. Redmond, Gregory J. McCabe, Noah Knowles, and David H. Peterson 12. The Role of Transboundary Agreements in the Columbia 263 River Basin: An Integrated Assessment in the Context of Historic Development, Climate, and Evolving Water Policy Alan Hamlet 13. Climate Doesn't Stop at the Border: U.S.-Mexico 291 Climatic Regions and Causes of Variability Andrew C. Comrie Table of Contents VB 14. Climate and Climate Variability in the Arenal River 317 Basin of Costa Rica Jorge A. Amador, Rafael Chacon, and Sadi Laporte 15. Nonlinear Forecasting of River Flows in Colombia Based 351 Upon ENSO and Its Associated Economic Value for Hydropower Generation German Po veda, Oscar J. Mesa, and Peter R. Waylen 16. Climate Variability and Climate Change, and Their 373 Impacts on the Freshwater Resources in the Border Region: A Case Study for Sonora, Mexico Victor 0. Magana and Cecilia Conde 17. Land Cover Changes and Climate Fluctuations in the 393 Upper San Pedro River Basin in Sonora, Mexico Hector MArias ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The editors wish to thank all of the contributing authors for their dedicated effort in helping us assemble this book and for their patience in seeing this project to completion. We are very pleased with the results, and we hope that they are as proud of the outcome as we are. We wish to thank the reviewers for giving generously of their time, for their expert evalua tions, and for their constructive suggestions. Jon Eischeid was very helpful in helping to assemble the many figures and tables. Diana Miller lent in valuable assistance throughout the editing process and in helping to develop the camera-ready manuscript. We are grateful to the Office of Global Pro grams of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for their financial support in enabling us to organize the meeting in Santa Barbara, California, and to Jeff Dozier and other members of the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management of the University of California at Santa Barbara for hosting the conference that led to the development of this book. IX FOREWORD "Climate is what we expect; weather is what we get. " Robert Heinlein This book addresses one of the most perplexing, but one of the most important, challenges in managing water resources in the twenty-first cen tury: How can our increasingly sophisticated understanding of climate be incorporated into everyday decisions about water management and alloca tion? The authors focus specifically on how to incorporate climate informa tion into trans boundary water management, where political, legal, social, and cultural factors can, in themselves, render seemingly straightforward allocation decisions intractable. From the western United States to Central America to South Amer ica, the chapters examine how climatic variability has already played a role in the development of transboundary water management systems. These case studies use many different contexts to examine whether water manag ers and political leaders will be able to adjust policies and legal frameworks to incorporate improved understanding of climate variability and climate change. As virtually all of the chapters recognize, the ability to translate in formation about climate into management decisions will become crucial as competition for scarce water resources increases. The barriers to making better use of climate variability and climate change information are not insignificant. In many arid trans boundary river basins, such as the Colorado or the Rio Grande, years of contentious wran gling have polarized decision making. Laws, compacts, and treaties-many of which were developed in the early twentieth century-have become sac rosanct, even as their limitations are recognized to lie at the core of some of the region's difficult transboundary water disputes. Injecting information on climate variability, especially in the form of short- and midterm projections that still have some degree of uncertainty, will, as the authors recognize, often be an uphill battle. In some of the Central American and South American basins dis cussed in this book, there may be more room for short-term progress, as wa ter is more abundant-at least relative to demand-and the trans boundary legal and institutional framework is less restrictive. The greater challenge in these basins may be establishing and funding the infrastructure and capacity Xl Xli Climate and Water to carry out the required monitoring and analysis of climate and hydrologi cal conditions. Underlying all these challenges, however, is water users' and water managers' inherent skepticism of climate predictability. Not unlike the way the local forecast shapes the layperson's faith (or lack of it) in weather pre diction technology, one or two erroneous predictions of El Nino or La Nina effects could be enough to sour a water management entity on incorporating climate variability into its decision-making process, especially if doing so would in any way upset existing allocation or operational arrangements. One example may illustrate the difficulties that can be expected. Despite two or more years of climate scientists' predictions that the Upper Rio Grande is entering a severe drought phase, in the spring and summer of 2002, irrigation and most municipal use from the reservoir system in New Mexico was scarcely reduced. The river below Albuquerque dried up, re sulting in more loss of the endangered silvery minnow and regenerating con tentious federal litigation. As of September 2002, the Elephant Butte Reser voir in southeastern New Mexico was at 15% of capacity. In "normal" years, it averages 58% of capacity in September. If the climate scientists are right, and the coming winter fails to provide a sufficient snowpack in the Colorado headwaters of the Rio Grande to replenish the reservoir, 2003 will bring an almost unprecedented water management (and litigation) crisis in this portion of the basin. Could this situation have been avoided if water managers and water users had taken more heed of the climatologists' predictions? Why didn't they? Did they believe the predictions, but fail to respond because of insur mountable political, legal, social, or economic barriers? Was the trans boundary litigation threat from Texas a more important, or at least more be lievable, factor than climate predictions? This situation nevertheless illustrates the potential opportunities for using climate information to foster better water management decisions. Had the predictions been sufficiently heeded, the water management entities might have taken early steps to avoid the crisis-for example, using groundwater banking, increasing use of federal farm bill programs that support agricultural water conservation through improved efficiency or temporary fallowing of land, and preparing the public for aggressive municipal water conservation. These are the kinds of challenges and opportunities this book so capa bly examines, in an interesting variety of transboundary situations. The authors convincingly demonstrate that we will need to use good climate science if we are to move toward sustainable management of water in the Americas. Mary E. Kelly Austin, Texas
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