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Abstracts
Abstract
In the post NAFTA era, Canada, Mexico, and the United States face a range of water resource management issues. These challenges include meeting increasing demands for water while also dealing with ecosystem management issues, attempting to balance the demands of riparian states in both upstream and downstream contexts, dealing with the extraction of groundwater and the potential overdraft of shared aquifers (especially in sole source aquifer areas), and coping with persistent water quality issues. In this paper, I provide an overview of the above issues and the North American context and review the experience of different regions in North America, specifically examining the U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico border region and seeking insights from one region that may be useful in the other region. As such, this is an updated version of a paper that I presented at Laval University in 2005, drawing on more recent experience.
Keywords:
- Binational,
- water,
- resource management,
- United-States,
- Canada,
- Mexico,
- border,
- environment,
- governance
Résumé
Dans l’ère post-Nafta, le Canada, le Mexique et les États-Unis font face à un problème de gestion de l’eau. Ces défis, incluant la demande croissante de l’eau et les problèmes de gestion des écosystèmes, tentent : de balancer les demandes des États riverains en amont et en aval, de faire face à l’extraction des eaux souterraines et de la potentielle découverte d’aquifères partagés (surtout dans les endroits où il n’y a qu’une seule source aquifère) et finalement de faire face aux problèmes persistants de la qualité de l’eau. Nous couvrirons dans cet article une vue d’ensemble des problèmes mentionnés ci-haut, le contexte nord-américain et une révision de l’expérience des différentes régions nord-américaines principalement en examinant les frontières Américano-canadiennes et Américano-mexicaine en recherchant des visions qui peuvent être utile à l’autre. Il s'agit d'une version mise à jour d'un document que nous avons présenté à l'Université Laval en 2005, en s'appuyant sur une expérience plus récente.
Mots-clés :
- Gestion,
- eau,
- binationale,
- Etats-Unis,
- Canada,
- Mexique,
- gouvernance,
- environnement
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Appendices
Remerciements
Portions of this paper are based on an unpublished concept paper that was developed with Dr. Elly Hermon, former Research Associate with Institut Québécois des Hautes Etudes Internationales, Université Laval. Credit is graciously extended to Dr. Hermon for ideas shared in this early concept paper on which I expand in this article. I also acknowledge the support and interest generously extended by Frédéric Lasserre, Luzma Fabiola Nava Jiménez, and Catherine Bédard of Observatoire de Recherches Internationales sur l'eau at Université Laval.
Notes
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[1]
The International Boundary and Water Commission is a binational water resource and boundary management institution that was established through the 1944 Water Treaty between the U.S. and Mexico. As such, it has a U.S. Section, the USIBWC, and the Mexican section, La Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA).
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[2]
See Brown (2005) for details on these efforts at region specific technical collaboration.
Bibliographie
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