MULTI-JURISDICTIONAL CHALLENGES OF TRANSBOUNDARY WATER MANAGEMENT: LESSONS FROM THE COLUMBIA RIVER TREATY REVIEWS

摘要

The mighty Columbia River Basin (CRB) recently garnered increased attention as the United States (U.S.) and Canada conducted reviews of the Columbia River Treaty (CRT or Treaty), an international model of transboundary cooperation between countries in water management. Through case studies and experience, water professionals and academics identified several challenges in trans-boundary water management, including sovereignty, authority, power, knowledge, funding/resource availability, scale, and complexity (Table 1). The rest of this article highlights examples of how the U.S. and Canada addressed these challenges in their reviews of the CRT through a series of questions: (1) Who leads? (2) Who gets a seat at the table? and (3) What falls within the scope of the effort? Before launching into answering those questions a background on the basin and Treaty is provided for context.