Transgressing Scales: Water Governance Across the Canada–U.S. Borderland

Abstract This article examines the rescaling of transboundary water governance along the Canada–U.S. border. We draw on recent research in geography on rescaling and borderlands to query two assumptions prevalent in the water governance literature: that a shift in scale downward to the subnational or "local" scale implies greater empowerment for local actors, and that rescaling implies that higher orders of government become less important in water management. The case study presents an analysis of qualitative and quantitative data drawn from a comprehensive database of transboundary water governance instruments compiled by the authors, interviews with water managers on both sides of the border, and participant observation in transboundary water governance activities. Our analysis indicates that although a significant increase in local water governance activities has occurred since the 1980s, this has not resulted in a significant increase in decision-making power at the local scale, nor has it been accompanied by a "hollowing out" of the nation-state. This suggests the need to question some of the assumptions widespread in the water management literature, such as the putative primacy of the local scale, and highlights the utility of bringing current geographical debates over scale and borderlands to bear on questions of environmental governance. En este artículo se examina el cambio de nivel de la gestión transfronteriza del agua en la frontera entre Canadá y Estados Unidos. Nos basamos en investigaciones geográficas recientes sobre el cambio de nivel y tierras fronterizas para analizar dos suposiciones dominantes en la literatura sobre gestión del agua: que un cambio descendente al nivel subnacional o "local" implica más poder para las partes locales, y que el cambio de nivel implica que las categorías más altas de gestión pierden importancia en la administración del agua. El caso de estudio presenta un análisis de datos cualitativos y cuantitativos obtenidos de una base de datos global de instrumentos de gestión transfronteriza del agua compilados por los autores, entrevistas con los administradores de agua de ambos lados de la frontera, y la observación participativa de las actividades de gestión transfronteriza del agua. Nuestro análisis indica que, aunque desde la década de los ochenta ha ocurrido un aumento significativo en las actividades de gestión de agua en el ámbito local, esto no ha dado como resultado un aumento significativo en el poder de toma de decisiones en este nivel ni ha ido acompañado por "vaciamiento" del país o del estado. Esto sugiere la necesidad de cuestionarse algunas de las suposiciones dominantes en la literatura de gestión del agua, como la supuesta primacía de la escala local, y recalca la utilidad de organizar debates geográficos actuales sobre el nivel de gestión y las tierras fronterizas para poder contestar las preguntas sobre administración ambiental. Key Words: borderlandsCanada–U.S.scaletransboundarywater governance关键词: 边疆加拿大-美国尺度跨界水资源治理Palabras claves: tierras fronterizasCanadá-Estados Unidosescalatransfronterizagestión del agua Acknowledgments We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and section editor for their thoughtful and constructive comments. Thanks also to the water officials and stakeholders who reviewed the database at various stages. Thank you to Alicia Tong, who helped construct an earlier version of the database, and Alice Cohen, who provided useful comments on a later version of the article. Last, we would like to acknowledge the generous support from the Walter and Gordon Duncan Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Weyerhaeuser Foundation, and the Canadian Consulate in Seattle, Washington. Notes 1. We define "local" governance as decision-making processes enacted primarily or solely at the subnational scale. 2. We define "instrument" as a device to govern water, such as a treaty, exchange of notes, memorandum of agreement, memorandum of understanding, agreement, order, and organization. 3. Empowerment thus does not refer to the outcomes of governance, in terms of the quality of decisions, or their impact on water regimes. Rather, empowerment refers solely to the degree to which actors are able to participate in, and influence, governance (i.e., decision-making) processes. 4. These designations were adopted from the regional divisions employed by Environment Canada (http://www.ec.gc.ca/commentreg_e.html) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (http://www.epa.gov/epahome/locate2.htm). 5. Full details of the database are available at the University of British Columbia's Program on Water Governance Web site (http://www.watergovernance.ca/Institute2/transboundary/index.htm). 6. Key stakeholders were consulted (including the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Environmental Protection Agency, International Joint Commission, and U.S. State Department) to review the database. Partial databases exist, but none are accessible to the public or even widely available internally. Aaron Wolf's "Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database" is a notable exception and is a key source for information on transboundary river basins and freshwater conflicts at a global level. The database is housed at Oregon State University and is available at http://www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu. 7. Both water quality and quantity issues are included in the data set because of the widening scope of water-related issues within transboundary governance. The shift from single-issue to more holistic approaches at a watershed scale is part of the trends discussed later in the article. See Table 2 for details on the changing trends of transboundary water issues. 8. This data set only includes binational agreements between Canada and the United States. Other international water agreements, where Canada and the United States are signatories, are not included in this analysis. 9. Environmental governance is often used as blanket term for complex interrelationships between land-use planning, resource use, and environmental conservation (CitationJonas and Bridge 2003), thereby conflating governance and management. In this article, governance refers to decision-making processes whereby stakeholders provide input, decisions are made, and decision-makers are held accountable, whereas water management refers to the operational principles and approaches through which water resources are managed. 10. Excluding Antarctica. 11. This trend is part of worldwide phenomena. For example, in Europe, the Water Framework Directive mandates a watershed approach to all rivers within the EU, over 50 percent of which are transboundary (CitationEuropean Commission 2000). In India (Citationvan Koppen and Shah 2007) and continental Africa (CitationLautz and Giordano 2005) the use of a watershed approach and integrated water resource management (IWRM) are also increasingly common in water-related projects—partially driven by requirements to receive international funding. 12. The IJC was established with the creation of the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty, which marks the earliest Canada–U.S. binational approach toward transboundary water governance. 13. For an up-to-date overview of water-related issues, see CitationGleick (2007). 14. This concept, although originally applied to political ecology, is transferable to the work within environmental governance, as both have limited engagement with politics of scale literature. 15. We use the Oxford International Law Dictionary to define these instruments. For example, treaty is defined as "An international agreement in writing between two states (a bilateral treaty) or a number of states (a multilateral treaty)." Similarly, Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties, 1969, Article 2, defines a treaty as "an international agreement concluded between States in written form and governed by international law, whether embodied in a single instrument or in two or more related instruments and whatever its particular designation." Such agreements can also be known as conventions, pacts, protocols, final acts, arrangements, and general acts. Treaties are binding in international law and constitute the equivalent of the municipal-law contract, conveyance, or legislation. A memorandum of understanding is defined as an "informal record or memorandum of international understandings arrived at in negotiations. It is frequently a preliminary step in concluding a treaty." An NGO is "a private international organization that acts as a mechanism for cooperation among private national groups in both municipal and international affairs, particularly in economic, social, cultural, humanitarian, and technical fields." 16. The interviews revealed that these organizations and networks tend to mobilize in times of crisis but are sustained even in noncrisis times through intermittent meetings. 17. The trend is even more pronounced when organizations are included in the graph. To stave off the possibility of "presentism," in which more contemporary organizations are reported than those from the past, we excluded organizations in this particular analysis. Even without organizations, the overall trend remains the same (declining federal and increasing subnational involvement). Organizations are included in Table 2. 18. The funding opportunities through the North American fund for Environmental Cooperation closed as of April 2007. A review of past grant recipients can be viewed on their Web site (http://www.cec.org/grants/index.cfm?varlan=english). 19. Further study would be needed, however, to make a direct link between NAFTA and CEC and greater presence of transboundary cooperation. Anecdotally and through interviews, the CEC was not linked to greater mobilization for transboundary water groups (at any scale). The availability of funds for these groups provides increased capacity for short-term projects but did not make significant changes in the capacity of binational relationships. 20. The top eight watershed basins are listed with actual number of instruments (e.g., twenty-three instruments in the Great Lakes). 21. For the purposes of the discussion, local actors were defined as community-based and First Nations groups, local governments, and elected local officials. 22. Several workshop participants, however, noted that NGOs are playing a greater role in shaping agendas but that these NGOs are not necessarily transboundary. 23. These findings are consistent with an earlier study by CitationNorman and Melious (2004), but a notable exception is the Gulf of Maine Council, where although 80 percent of the donor dollars come from the United States, the project funds are equitably distributed between Canada and the United States. 24. The respondent noted, though, that after 11 September 2001 some of the sites are no longer public domain—particularly information regarding reservoirs. It was reported that even state employees have difficulty accessing the sites because they are maintained at a federal level. 25. Data is considered a "public good" in the United States because it was created using public funds. In Canada, less comprehensive policies tend to limit access, both internally and externally. Several of the Canadian respondents, however, noted the presence of informal networks of data exchange where, after working in one's field for several years, you "just know who to call for specific information" and are able to "bypass the system." 26. There is, of course, a temporal element to this—the bodies with longer colonial settlement histories such as the Niagara and St. Lawrence tend to have more instruments built around them than the "newer" issues such as the Flathead Basin. 27. Many of the respondents noted that the IJC serves as counterbalance to this mismatched governance—creating "an even playing field" for binational cooperation. 28. CitationBiswas (2004) speaks to the difficulties of cooperative government and integrated water resource management in a recent article in Water International. He argues that the difficulties of coordination lie in the very foundation of a confusing and amorphous definition: If parties are unable to agree on a common definition how are they able to succeed in practice? 29. This is not to say, however, that the role of the local does not contribute to environmental governance at all. Our study reveals several positive attributes of local participation in transboundary environmental governance (particularly in terms of raising public support of an issue). (See Figure 2 for a list of reported barriers and drivers of transboundary cooperation.) Our focus in this article, however, is not to explore the drivers of cooperation; rather, we aim to temper the assumptions that the local actors are more effective than other actors due to their "on the ground" standing.

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