Climate Variability and Change in the Southwest

Part IV: Workshop: Cross-cutting Issues

September 4, 1997

Chapter 16

U.S.-Mexico Border

Workshop report prepared by:

Robert G. Varady, Interim Director
Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy
The University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ

Workshop Participants: Robert Varady (facilitator), Stephen Abernathy, David Brookshire, Tim Brown, Andrew Comrie, Kennneth Cronin, R.T. Eby, James Enote, Lisa Farrow, Robinson Honani, Cynthia Lindquist, Rory Majenty, Beau McClure, Gerardo Monroy, Barbara Morehouse, James Renthal, Carlos Rincon, Marco Rivera, Maurice Roos, Michael Smith, Anthony Socci, Dennis Sundie, Beatriz Vera, Selso Villega, Craig Wilcox, Jeff Williams

Impacts and Vulnerability

Culturally, politically, economically, and geographically, the southwest of the United States is one of the nation's most complex regions. Within this large area, no zone diverges more from national norms than the narrow strip of land abutting the border with Mexico.

Here, communities exhibit cultural variety, richness, and complexity that reflect their proximity and ties to Mexico.

The population centers of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico also exist in a physical setting that is exceptionally precarious--chronically water-short, financially resource-poor, and subject to highly variable precipitation.

Adding to their overall vulnerability is a rapidly changing demography characterized by intensive urban economic development, growing transnational trade, heavy in-migration, and seriously strained infrastructure.

On the Mexican side of the border, the 20-year-old maquiladora (foreign-owned industrial plants) phenomenon has spurred multifold growth of the major cities, generally raised per-capita income, and brought greater prosperity--albeit with the usual accompaniments: overcrowding, poor sanitation, reduced air and water quality, greater social instability, inadequate tax revenue, and consequent inability of local governments to finance and implement needed improvements.

North of the border, population growth has remained much more modest--though still large by U.S. standards. The two largest cities (San Diego and El Paso) have grown substantially; the other dozen or so urban centers also have enlarged, but remain relatively small.

More significantly, the U.S. part of the border region remains appreciably poorer than the nation as a whole. Increased investment from the maquiladora program and from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has yet to raise per-capita income levels to those of the core areas of the country.

Similarly, infrastructure--particularly water-management infrastructure--continues to be inadequate. Since early 1995, two post-NAFTA institutions, the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC) and the North American Development Bank (NADBank), have been attempting to reverse a decades-old trend of minimal investment in environmental infrastructure.

Adding to the complexity of problem-solving is the binational nature of environmental issues. Throughout the present century, relations between the United States and Mexico have fluctuated in response to national moods. Sovereignty considerations have dominated relations and complicated attempts at cooperative, local-based efforts.

As a consequence, until very recently, inflexibility prevailed--just when flexibility was most needed. The advent of BECC and NADBank as progressive, responsive organizations, and the new openness of the venerable International Boundary and Water Commission, offer a promise of greater transnational cooperation and greater capacity to respond to climate-induced environmental threats.

These political, economic, and demographic conditions, combined with the exigencies of the region's aridity and semiaridity, induce a state of perpetual and serious vulnerability to climatic variability.

Historically, drought and flooding have frequently alternated, disrupting livelihoods, and causing economic hardship and social displacement. In such an environment, urban water supplies are particularly susceptible to changes in precipitation.

At the other extreme, seasonal flooding, especially during the summer monsoon season, often overtaxes the capacity of local sewage systems, resulting in health-endangering surface flows of untreated waste.

Responses

On both sides of the border, existing sanitation infrastructure is often inadequate or not fully functional. On the Mexican side, many neighborhoods are unserved and even under non-extreme circumstances, systems—which are old, leaky, too small, and poorly maintained—are not able to cope with increasing demands. Sewage chronically contaminates groundwater and surface-water supplies, and during extreme events, overflows its bounds and is directly exposed.

Comparably, in times of drought or excessive heat, water supply can be inadequate. In Mexican communities, directly-piped drinking water is not universally supplied, so many residents store water in rooftop tanks.

When water is scarce, prices rise, delivery is more infrequent, and water is less available. On such occasions, public health is seriously impacted. In U.S. border towns, the situation is less critical, but nonetheless of concern, most particularly in colonias (unplanned settlements) in New Mexico and Texas.

In an area whose climate is characterized by uncertainty and high variability, it would be reasonable to assume that populations have developed adaptations and coping mechanisms to counteract or mitigate the effects of extreme heat on the one hand and extensive flooding on the other.

Indeed, the region's indigenous populations had such mechanisms: maintaining the modest size of their communities, selecting the most habitable and least vulnerable sites, tailoring their agricultural production systems to rainfall availability, and constraining their uses of water.

With development and migration, however, adaptive features have been lost, and towns and cities have been modeled after others elsewhere. The results have been the conditions described above.

As noted, the Free Trade Agreement has brought with it some promise of investment in water/wastewater infrastructural improvements. BECC in particular has stressed sustainable development, insisting on sustainability in the design of projects it approves.

Most notably, this requirement refers to wise and efficient use and reuse of water. Whether BECC's criteria result in better water management in the long-run has yet to be tested. Nor has BECC or any other binational border institution confronted the additional consequences of possibly increased climate variability.

Research and Information Needs

Perhaps even more than in other sectors, lack of information and data constrains responses to environmental problems in general and to climate-induced problems in particular.

Partly, the complicating factor here is the set of burdens imposed by the transboundary nature of issues and institutions. Thus availability of reliable and timely information, limited in any event, is even more restricted in the binational setting.

The disparity in financial resources combined with varying, often disparate, political and cultural approaches to planning and management in the two countries result in many differences in:

• languages
• economic development priorities
• availability of trained personnel
• measurement systems and scales of analysis
• precision and accuracy of scientific data
• levels of access to technology, especially computer-information technology
• general availability of relevant raw and processed information

Paradoxically, just when technological and analytical tools are becoming more sophisticated and better adapted, the complications of transboundary information management and application are often seen as impediments to easy, low-cost solutions.

The post-NAFTA institutions are beginning to address some of these information problems through direct community technical assistance programs, greater responsiveness to public needs, and dissemination of documents. But the mandate of BECC and NADBank addresses only environmental-infrastructure projects--that is, new constructions.

It is evident that the regions' broader environmental problems, including climate change, will require additional attention. Accordingly, these problems will entail greater cross-border cooperation, development of tailored protocols, and substantial investment in improving information access.

In particular, an information and public-outreach clearinghouse for the region would meet a number of the immediate needs of managers of the sectors most vulnerable to climate change.

Policy Issues

As seen, all environmental problems in the border region, including those associated with climate-change impacts and responses, are confounded by binationalism.

Responsive decisionmaking holds the key to developing successful strategies, but the nature of policy varies greatly in the two neighboring countries. In the United States, much decisionmaking and most management is localized, while in Mexico both remain highly centralized.

The resulting imbalance frequently manifests itself at the national level in apparent contradiction, greater inflexibility, or the appearance of lack of political will.

To serve as the most effective units of analysis, sectors of the border region need to be viewed as ecological zones, airsheds, watersheds, and communities--not as political entities. Policies formulated to address climate-change impacts should recognize this, even if the policies themselves are national in scope.

In this regard, the border region offers some promise since some communities already have begun to put in place formal and informal cooperative arrangements to deal with environmental issues.

The challenge for climate-change planners and managers is to harness the palpable diversity, rich indigenous knowledge base, and nascent local-level cooperation of local communities to frame responsive policies.

For additional discussions on this topic, see the presentations for Panel 6: U.S.-Mexico Border Region and Indian Country, in Chapter 8.