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New Mexico’s Water Emergency: What Must Be Funded

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We’re Asking the Governor & Legislature to Fund State Water Agencies to Secure A Better Water Future

Senator Liz Stefanics, Chair of both the Legislature’s Water and Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Conservation Committee, asked water advocates to identify financial resources needed to confront New Mexico’s deepening water crisis. The New Mexico Water Advocates responded with three essential programs: Rio GrandeCompact Compliance, Water Data infrastructure, and Regional Water Security Planning.

These are not long-term wish-list items. They were recommended specifically by the 2022 New Mexico Water Policy and Infrastructure Task Force. They are well-vetted and justified emergency responses to New Mexico’s water crisis that is already destabilizing communities and ecosystems and threatening our economy. New Mexico is over-using its renewable water supplies while climate heating drives aridification and the decline of both groundwater and surface water resources. The State must improve its ability to comply with the Rio Grande Compact, to track and manage actual water use, and to plan realistically for a more resilient water future that is now in jeopardy.

These three programs are designed to meet the crisis and bring it under control. Together they build the State’s essential capacity to enforce water rights, meet New Mexico’s Rio Grande Compact obligations, generate and share reliable water data, and empower regional planning councils to act on that information. Only the State of New Mexico, through its agencies and technical institutions, has the authority and responsibility to do these essential jobs. With adequate funding to begin multi-year efforts this session, the State can start stabilizing the crisis and lay the foundation for science-based, transparent, and durable water governance. Without funding, New Mexico will remain in emergency mode—reacting to shortages, assuming the enormous risk and costs that a compact violation unleashes, and defending against new Texas litigation—instead of preventing or managing to mitigate them.

Rio Grande Compact Accrued Debit/Credit History

1) Rio Grande Compact Compliance

New Mexico must meet its delivery obligations to Texas and the United States while protecting communities and ecosystems in the Middle Rio Grande. We recommend:

  • $10 million (one-time) to the Office of the State Engineer (OSE) to implement the Lower Rio Grande settlement and prevent a new Rio Grande Compact violation due to Middle Rio Grande water overuse. At the current trend, we have only two years and perhaps only one to prevent new Texas v. New Mexico litigation. An emergency clause is needed to provide funding as early in 2026 as possible.
  • $1 million (recurring) for enforcement capacity—staff, office space, vehicles, and equipment—so the OSE can enforce Lower and Middle Rio Grande water rights.
  • Pass the Water Rights Enforcement bill, the 2025 measure to modernize an outdated statute that stalled on the Senate floor awaiting a final vote. The State Engineer needs workable administrative enforcement authority to stop illegal water uses without having to sue the user.

Why it matters: The Lower Rio Grande settlement requires New Mexico’s detailed plan in two years to substantially reduce Lower Rio Grande water use and full compliance in 10 years. At the present trend, Middle Rio Grande illegal water overuse will cause a compact violation in two years.

2) Water Data to Support Planning & Management

New Mexico’s water decisions are only as good as the data behind them. We recommend:

  • $7 million (one-time) to the OSE to replace the outdated water-rights database and application, build a real-time water-use database and application, and implement a modern management information system.
  • $3 million (one-time) to NM Tech for the Bureau of Geology & Mineral Resources (NMBGMR) to contract with Water Data Act directing agencies to publish priority datasets to the state water data catalogue. These datasets will be selected in consultation with the Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) to help ensure regional water planning councils have the best available science, data, and models.
  • $21.5 million (one-time) to NM Tech for NMBGMR to accelerate the statewide Aquifer Mapping Program—geophysics, new characterization and monitoring wells, and term staff—to illuminate where, how fast, and why groundwater conditions are changing.

Why it matters: You cannot manage what you don’t measure. These investments give local water managers, planners, and the public the transparent, timely information demanded by aridification, warming, and overuse.

3) Regional Water Security Planning

To make the Water Security Planning Act work on the ground, regions must organize credible councils and set pragmatic work plans. We recommend:

  • $4.8 million (one-time) to the OSE for the ISC to make grants to nine regional entities to stand up councils and develop work plans for Commission approval. The appropriation includes 6% for ISC administrative costs at $300,000.

Why it matters: Durable solutions are local and data driven. Funding regional councils to organize and plan with the best data available creates a transparent path from facts to decisions.

Bottom line: New Mexico is overusing declining renewable water supplies in a warming climate. The responsible fix is not slogans or one-off projects. It is steady, statewide capacity in water law enforcement, water data, aquifer science, and regional planning. Please urge your legislators to fund these requests and pass the enforcement bill this session. It’s the most cost-effective way to protect communities, economies, and rivers—not just this year, but for decades.

Elephant-Butte-Reservoir-Aug-2022-38

New Mexico Drought, Aridification & Desertification

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Protecting Water, Farms, and Communities:

How Policy and Planning Can Protect New Mexicans From Their Hotter, Drier Future

Elephant Butte Reservoir, August 2022. Credit: The Water Desk, © Mitch Tobin, by permission.

Is New Mexico Really in a Drought?

We frequently hear and read that NM is in a drought. But then I recently learned that an acequia board commissioner says that he doesn’t believe we’re in a drought, just a temporary lack of water. So, what is a drought and are we in one?

Defining Drought: A Temporary Water Shortage

Going to the internet we learn that drought is generally defined as a prolonged period of abnormally low rainfall or total precipitation, leading to a shortage of water for some activity, group, or environmental sector. It’s a complex phenomenon that can manifest differently depending on the region and the specific needs being affected. Droughts can last anywhere from a few weeks to several years. Certainly, NM and the SW would qualify as being in a drought as we have had a “shortage of water” for several years, at least. So, “drought” implies a temporary climatic condition that typically reverses within weeks, months, or a few years.

When Drought Becomes Aridification

But what should it be called when the water shortage period is longer, perhaps not reversible within a decade or perhaps much longer? Then, two additional terms become relevant to consider: aridification and desertification. Again, going to the Internet we learn that aridification refers to a gradual process during which a region becomes increasingly dry, moving towards an arid or desert-like climate. It’s not just about a temporary lack of rainfall (drought), but a long-term shift towards a drier state, often linked to climate change and increased temperatures.

Desertification: A Long-Term Climate Threat

In turn, we learn that desertification is the degradation of land in already dry regions, influenced by both natural factors (like climate change and droughts) and human activities. Certainly, NM and the SW would qualify as “land in already dry regions” and appear to be getting drier. Thus, both aridification and desertification are terms currently appropriate to apply to NM and the SW in general. A clear dividing line between the terms does not appear to exist.

Climate Warming as the Driving Force

Note that for both the concepts of aridification and desertification, climate change can lead to their defined conditions. Here it is important to recognize that the term “climate warming” as the actual cause now driving both concepts. It is the increasing rate that solar energy heats the atmosphere, causing the increased drying of soils as well as the alteration of historic wind, precipitation, hurricane, and other storm patterns, all of which can be collectively called “climate change.”

Scientific Evidence for Climate Change

We currently hear some politicians assert that claims of the ongoing patterns are climate change as being a hoax. They say we are not experiencing human-induced climate warming nor is climate change due to emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases occurring.

In contrast we know the simple facts that a great diversity of scientific investigations starting in at least in 1774 have shown that inputs of the sun’s energy heats the earth and our atmosphere. Then beginning in 1856, we additionally learned that increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air can produce a greater magnitude and persistence of atmospheric warming by the sun.

Today, there is abundant solid scientific evidence from modeling and monitoring, as well as from direct every-day observations that new records are being established locally and regionally for daily, seasonal, and annual high temperatures in the air around us as well as new records for the extents and durations regional floods and wildfires. These changes are being directly linked to climate warming alterations to air flow patterns, collectively disputing claims that increasing threats from climate change are a hoax.

Clearly, it is appropriate to claim that increasing aridification is occurring in NM and across the SW. What about claiming that desertification is occurring? Here we turn to scientific information produced by atmospheric modeling and monitoring. These results document how climate warming is significantly altering atmospheric circulation and causing shifts in wind patterns.

The Role of Atmospheric Circulation (Hadley Cells)

Of particular concern for us in the SW is how the atmospheric circulation patterns are changing. One of these major air circulation patterns (Hadley cells) result from hot, moist air rising from the equatorial tropics. This air then flows northward and southward, dropping  rain and drying out along the way until this dried air historically has fallen at about 30 degrees north and south latitude tending to produce dry often desert conditions on the ground below.

Monitoring has revealed that the downdraft edges of the Hadley cells have expanded poleward by about one degree latitude in each hemisphere, with the magnitude of the expansion dependent on global temperature increases. The scientific literature reports that this indicates the total amount of latitudinal expansion of the Hadley cells over the period 1979–2005 was about two degrees in latitude, north and south. Over that same period the increase in global temperature was about 0.5°C.  The poleward edges of the Hadley Cells appear to move about two degrees poleward in latitude for each degree Celsius of global warming.  Of interest here, the internet tells us that, “Current policies are projected to lead to a 2.7°C median warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100.”

Currently, the rate of climate warming is expected to increase steadily as the United States’ past regulatory efforts to constrain or even to reverse climate change are now themselves being reversed. Based on the above temperature increase and  the Hadley cells expansion rate, the northern (and southern) drying down draft of desert forming air could move its historical location of approximately 30 degrees latitude north (and south) to approximately 35.4 degrees.

What Desertification Means for New Mexico

Albuquerque is located at about 35 degrees north latitude. Therefore, due to the increasing likelihood of rapid atmospheric warming, it is clearly appropriate to describe NM as being at present risk from desertification, if it is not already impacting some, particularly southern, part of our state.

Water Resource Challenges in the Middle Rio Grande Valley

These climate warming projections point to the urgent needs for NM and other SW states to implement new, dynamic approaches for water resource management. This becomes a particular concern for those living along the Middle Rio Grande Valley who are being threatened both by prospects of desertification increasing into the future and by requirements to meet Rio Grande Compact delivery flows to Elephant Butte Reservoir. (We have previously characterized the pending crisis related to the Compact: https://nmwateradvocates.org/middle-rio-grande-compact-compliance-crisis-deepens/).

Acequia Traditions and Shortage Sharing

When periods of drought threaten acequia communities these threats are addressed through a practice called “shortage sharing.” Typically, since all acequia members know each other and work together to maintain their acequia system, they develop levels of empathy toward each other and share the water shortages to ensure that no one suffers disproportionally.

Conclusion: Preparing for a Drier Future

Current and upcoming water shortages along the MRG valley and elsewhere across NM require even a greater degree of water user empathy toward each other to implement the magnitude of shortage sharing now becoming required.  Of concern, MRG water users lack the level of neighborly relationships found in acequia communities.  Therefore, to develop the necessary regional-scale of water management that can produce water distribution equities similarly to those found with acequia shortage sharing clearly requires extensive regional planning efforts that we discussed elsewhere (https://nmwateradvocates.org/why-nm-water-planning-matters/).

Rio Grande at Albuquerque, no pools in sight, late July 2025 Photo: Wesley Noe

Why Water Planning Matters

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Aquifers are vanishing. Climate stress is growing. Decentralized water planning is the path forward.

New Mexico faces a stark and accelerating water crisis. In many parts of the state, aquifers are being depleted to support uses that cannot be sustained, especially agriculture dependent on non-recharging groundwater. This extraction is not just borrowing from the future: it is stealing from it. As climate change reduces snowpack, accelerates evaporation, and intensifies drought, the state’s water supply is shrinking.

Though aware of the situation, our political leaders seem unwilling or unable to confront its urgency, while the consequences of delay grow more severe by the year.

An “all hands” commitment to water resources planning (or more simply “water planning”) is how we propose to confront this reality. 

Rio Grande at Albuquerque, no pools in sight, late July 2025 Photo: Wesley Noe
Rio Grande at Albuquerque, no pools in sight, late July 2025.  Photo credit: Wesley Noe

Water planning is about solving problems. Good planning helps us understand our water supply and uses, face hard choices, anticipate future conditions, and make informed decisions to secure a livable and just future for New Mexicans.

The choices we make in the next few years will determine whether many communities across New Mexico have water security, or whether too many will face escalating crises. The time for planning is not someday. It is now.

Purpose of Water Resources Planning

Water resources planning is a forward-looking, problem-solving process to ensure the sustainable, equitable, and efficient use and management of water in the face of increasing and permanent scarcity. Its purpose is to identify and address water challenges, especially those driven by climate change, aquifer depletion, legal obligations, and shifting demands. It does this by thoughtfully and carefully integrating science, law, governance, and public values.

Water planning in New Mexico must take place in conformity with state and federal laws, while also confronting a basic truth: Many essential water needs and uses are not protected by law. Drinking water and sanitation for all, reliable supplies for communities, schools and hospitals, our beloved rivers and the sacred needs that they supply—these uses have no claim to water rights or have rights with low priority under law. Yet these needs are not going away. and raise the fundamental question: how to share shortages fairly. Thus, planning involves negotiating the rules for who gets what, when and how.

Drained aquifers cannot be brought back. Adaptive action is the only way to avoid catastrophic and irreversible loss. Urgency in understanding local situations now through planning will reduce the number of future New Mexico communities that will run out of water. Decentralization is essential. The problems are local and regional. Planning must be too.

Key Goals

1. Balance Supply and Demand

Assess available water under changing climate conditions and align this reality with current and future demands for people, farms, ecosystems, and economies. This requires a reliable understanding of the planning region’s water supplies and water uses.

2. Balance Competing Needs

Navigate the intersecting and often conflicting demands of:
• Urban and rural communities
• Agriculture
• Environmental protection
• Economic development

In New Mexico, this includes confronting the consequences of continued agricultural uses and proposed economic development new uses that mine groundwater at the expense of communities and future generations who will be left without. Planning must grapple with these intergenerational trade-offs and define transitions toward sustainable use.

Water measurements and hydrogeologic science developed and applied with scientific integrity must define a framework upon which the social methods of water planning. Water planning overlays the law, legal uncertainty, economics, and values on the facts. A beginning common ground between diverse interested parties can be built on understanding facts and the legal situation in a process where the parties learn about the problems that planning must address and get to know each other. 

Irrespective of the diversity of belief systems held by members of a community, it is essential that planning be built on a framework of agreed upon hydrological, hydrogeological, and meteorological data. (You are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts!) Face to face communication among members of a planning group is essential in building the trust needed to get beyond “head in the sand” refusal to listen or to entertain opposing points of view.  That trust is key to building a workable plan.

The work of planning is social and probabilistic, not deterministic. A major social component is breaking through the head-in-the-sand attitude that is apparent in so many local business leaders and public officials. It may be difficult to bring recalcitrant parties to the table, but easier as they come to understand the risks they and their interests face by simply being members of the community. Their participation is needed to help find solutions.

3. Promote Long-Term Sustainability

Acknowledge the limits of natural recharge. Many New Mexico aquifers are essentially non-recharging, and climate change is reducing recharge further due to accelerating evapotranspiration. Planning must reflect these realities and support strategies to limit further depletion, extend critical supplies, and protect water security for future generations. Planning should support monitoring systems and adaptive governance frameworks to respond to depletion trends and new data.

4. Manage Risks and Uncertainty

Prepare for droughts, floods, compliance with legal constraints like the Rio Grande Compact, and intensifying climate volatility. Regional water budgets and enforceable demand management agreements are tools that might be produced through regional water planning to address uncertainty.

5. Protect Ecosystems and Water Quality

Safeguard river health, aquifer integrity, and clean water supplies through integrated, science-based planning. Planning should address nature-based solutions—such as increased natural infiltration of stormwater runoff, watershed restoration, ecological flow targets, and aquifer recharge zones—as climate adaptation strategies.

6. Guide Investment

Make sound decisions and recommendations for infrastructure spending. Prioritize projects, programs, and policies for implementation. Well-prepared regional plans will unlock access to state and federal infrastructure funding. Technical assistance should be provided to ensure all regions, especially underserved and rural areas, are competitive and ready.

7. Ensure Equity and Public Benefit

Plan to meet the needs of all people, not just those with the most power or resources. Respect and integrate tribal, cultural, and historical water rights in all decisions. This includes supporting capacity-building for Tribal and rural communities to ensure their voices, rights, and knowledge systems are equitably integrated into planning and governance processes.

8. Inform Policy and Governance

Provide a science-based framework to guide laws, public funding, institutional design, and transparent decision-making. Planning must support governance that is lawful and enforceable, while also addressing essential and sacred water requirements—like those for communities, hospitals, schools, ecosystems—that are often subordinate under existing water rights but are indispensable to a functioning society.

Without a clear planning framework and enforceable rules, these essential needs will remain vulnerable. Some will go unmet. The window for proactive, science-informed policy is rapidly closing. We must choose between managed transition and unmanaged collapse. Sound regional planning based on truth, urgency, and local leadership is the foundation for New Mexico’s water future.

ISC Commission members have the power to unlock access to funding so that across NM regions and regional leaders can begin now, instead of dates far into the 2030s, to begin to fulfill their lawful decentralized responsibilities.

ISC schedule-regional planning will wait until 2029 and beyond
ISC staff presentation to the Commission on June 18, 2025. Water Advocates photo
Asequia

Decentralize Water Planning and Management

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From acequias to groundwater-dependent communities across the state, New Mexicans are living the consequences of the state’s approach to water governance. To meet New Mexicans’ diverse water needs, New Mexico must decentralize and democratize how it manages its most scarce and vital resource: water.

This is an intended and likely outcome of successful implementation of the 2023 Water Security Planning Act (WSPA), which envisions the creation of regional water planning coordination bodies throughout the state.

During the recent legislative session, the New Mexico Water Advocates understandably focused much of its attention on state-level concerns—funding, and on Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) rules for carrying out state-mandated functions for implementing the WSPA. Scant attention was paid to the nine designated water planning regions or to the rules and authorities under which the regional entities would operate. This essay is intended to shift the focus of our concerns to the regions themselves.

From Uniformity to Polycentricity

The term “polycentric” denotes governance systems where decision-making authority over all uses of a public good (here, the water resource) is not held centrally by the state, but instead is divided across multiple, overlapping decision centers that use diverse approaches to coordinate their activities. Though the State’s initial rules for constituting the Regional Water Planning and Management Councils are still being debated, the “polycentricity” concept can be applied to governance practices that are likely to emerge from the Councils’ work. Polycentric governance is not limited to governments, nor does it imply a single form of institutional arrangement.

Embracing Diversity and Complexity

Heterogeneity in this context refers to differences and disparities among stakeholders that can affect the ability of a community to undertake successful collective action. These differences—in endowments, beliefs, preferences (including financial interests), occupations, education, ethnicity, etc.—can significantly influence whether it is possible for members of a community to find shared existential common ground despite differing perceptions of their individual self-interest. Individuals and groups often hold overlapping perspectives, which can either support or complicate collective action.

Design Principles for Collective Water Governance

In Governing the Commons, Elinor Ostrom identified several issues that are typically addressed in constituting and maintaining successful, long-lasting natural resource governance institutions. She called these “design principles.” They include:

  • Clear resource and legitimate user boundaries exist and are understood.
  • Rules are congruent with local social and environmental conditions.
  • User benefits from managing the common pool resource as a public good or commons are proportionate to the inputs required from the user.
  • Individuals affected by the operational rules can participate in modifying those rules.
  • Monitors accountable to the users monitor the users’ appropriation and provision levels.
  • Monitors accountable to the users monitor the condition of the resource.
  • Users who violate rules are likely to be assessed graduated sanctions by other users or by officials accountable to those users.
  • Users have rapid access to low-cost local arenas to resolve conflicts.
  • The rights of users to devise their own institutions are supported by government authorities. (These institutional arrangements will vary among regions.)
  • Actions operationalizing these design principles are organized in networks of nested enterprises, providing both horizontal and vertical linkages for coordination and joint action.

This list of design principles, while based on Ostrom’s, has been updated and modified by more recent empirical work of scholars and and practitioners.[1]

Other factors such as the size of user groups, differing types of heterogeneity within or between them, and the type of government regime within which users operate may also be relevant.

These core design principles offer guidance as to how New Mexico’s incipient Regional Water Planning and Management Councils might be constituted. Past attempts at regional water planning have foundered in part because—contrary to language in the 1987 bill that authorized “regions of the state [to] plan for their own water futures”—State water agencies seemed more concerned to maintain control and to insist on uniformity than to tackle real problems identified by people living and working within the regions.

A Pragmatic Path Forward

To what extent can these design principles be useful in crafting institutions for New Mexico’s water planning and management? Might they be applicable in designing polycentric governance and management systems at a variety of scales? We can’t be sure. However, the Water Advocates started down this road in the belief that water planning could be made effective if centralized state water agencies really were to listen to the people they serve. This approach suggests a strategy to make that happen.

In the article cited above, the author (Cox) asserts that a probabilistic rather than deterministic approach to understanding the usefulness of the design principles is warranted. Experiments in game theory as well as case study data from the field suggest that in repeated interactions participants begin to employ more cooperative strategies as they learn more about each other. A polycentric approach provides opportunities for actors in each region to communicate informally, recognize shared interests and conflicting needs and values, and build the trust needed to come to workable solutions to our multiple water crises.

Let’s Build Them—Together

If the state is sincere about empowering communities to shape their water futures, it must support the formation of Regional Water Planning and Management Councils that reflect local voices, address local conditions, and apply proven principles of collective governance. The path won’t be easy—but by listening, learning, and trusting local knowledge, New Mexico has a chance to craft resilient institutions equal to the challenge.

John Brown is a member of the New Mexico Water Advocates board and a former executive director of the New Mexico Water Dialogue. He has taught in the public administration program and the political science department at the University of New Mexico.

[1] Cox, M., G. Arnold, and S. Villamayor Tomás. A review of design principles for community-based natural resource management. Ecology and Society 15(4), 38;

[online] URL: http//www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol/15/iss4/art38

Glossary of Key Terms

Polycentric Governance
A system where decision-making authority is distributed among multiple centers of power—such as local, regional, and state entities—rather than being concentrated in a single central authority. These centers operate semi-independently but coordinate with one another, allowing for more locally tailored solutions.

Common Pool Resource (CPR)
A natural resource—such as water, fisheries, or forests—that is shared by a group of users. CPRs are difficult to exclude people from using, but overuse by individuals can deplete the resource for everyone. Effective management requires collective action and agreed-upon rules.

Design Principles (Ostrom’s Principles)
A set of foundational guidelines identified by political economist Elinor Ostrom for creating successful, self-governing institutions to manage shared natural resources. These principles include clearly defined boundaries, participatory rule-making, monitoring, and conflict-resolution mechanisms.

Nested Enterprises
A governance structure where smaller, local institutions are embedded within larger, overarching frameworks. This layering allows for coordination across different scales (local, regional, state) while maintaining local autonomy where appropriate.

Heterogeneity
The diversity within a group or region in terms of characteristics like culture, income, education, interests, or resource access. In water governance, heterogeneity can either hinder cooperation (due to conflicting interests) or enhance it (by bringing multiple perspectives and strengths).

Operational Rules
The specific, day-to-day rules that govern who can use a resource, how, when, and under what conditions. These differ from constitutional rules (which define who can make rules) and collective-choice rules (which set broader governance policies).

Graduated Sanctions
A conflict management principle where rule violations are addressed with penalties that increase in severity based on the frequency or seriousness of the offense. This encourages compliance without relying solely on harsh punishment.

Low-Cost Local Arenas for Conflict Resolution
Accessible and affordable ways for users of a shared resource to resolve disagreements without going to court. These can include local mediation processes or community meetings.

Probabilistic Approach
An analytical perspective that acknowledges uncertainty and variation in outcomes. Rather than assuming a particular governance model will always work (a deterministic approach), a probabilistic view suggests that certain principles increase the likelihood of success under the right conditions.

Water Security Planning Act (WSPA)
A 2023 New Mexico state law intended to modernize and improve water planning by delegating responsibility and authority to Regional Water Planning and Management Councils. The law emphasizes local participation, scientific data, and strategic coordination to address long-term water challenges.

Regional Water Planning and Management Councils
Entities envisioned under the WSPA to lead water planning efforts at the regional level. These councils are meant to represent diverse communities’ local interests and create actionable plans tailored to each region’s specific water issues, values, and priorities.

State Water Agencies (OSE/ISC)
Refers to the Office of the State Engineer (OSE) and the Interstate Stream Commission (ISC)—the two key New Mexico state agencies responsible for water rights administration, planning, and compact compliance.

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Water: An Urgent Community Problem Requiring A Community-Driven Solution

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Fulbright Scholars from Argentina, ending a three-week Young Leaders program at the University of New Mexico, said, “water is a community problem. Research continues to find problems and propose solutions that don’t reach the people. …The only way to generate sustainable solutions is to understand water as a collective action problem and empower the people to take action.” They were focusing on the Middle Rio Grande, but their findings are applicable to public water commons across our beloved New Mexico.

UNM’s three-week program for this year’s cohort of Argentine Young Leaders was titled Peace through Policymaking. They viewed Argentine and the Middle Rio Grande case studies problems through the Peace Engineering framework that uses science and data to define problems and to vet solutions. Peace in this context does not mean the opposite of war. It means the reduction of violence, broadly construed. Peace Engineering explicitly seeks 1) public health in all policy, 2) justice, equity, accessibility, diversity, and inclusion, and 3) climate change sustainability. 

I’ve instinctively applied Peace Engineering concepts since becoming a water policy engineer in 1990. This summer, I’ve learned about the Peace Engineering framework and researched collective action, the Argentine scholars’ overarching recommendation. I believe the Peace Engineering and Nobel Prize winning collective action frameworks will be helpful to organize our water problem-solving to implement 21st century solutions to our more arid climate change future.

As a student at NMSU in the late 1960s, Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons essay caught my attention. Recently, a Water Advocates board member used the Tragedy of the Commons phrase to describe water in the Middle Rio Grande. 

In researching the Argentine scholars’ collective action recommendation to generate community-driven solutions to the community problems of overuse of our shrinking water resources commons, I Iearned sustainability thinking focuses now on Ending the Tragedy of the Commons.  

Nobel Prize winning research and theory, by Dr. Elinor Ostrom and her spouse, shows polycentric collective action and polycentric governance works to find and implement community solutions to sustain natural resource commons. In simple terms, it means what the Argentine’s recommended slogan says, “Water is Life! Do your Part.” Various levels of government must all do their parts. Water users, including all of us, must do theirs.

Breaking down polycentric governance, 

Governance means all the processes which determine the range of acceptable individual or collective choices available to members of the associated group or community.

Since poly means many, the meaning of polycentric governance emerges naturally: a system in which many diverse centers of partial authority collectively cover the full range of governance tasks.  Quoted from this source.

We need polycentric collective action to define our problems; to understand the limits of our water. As Hannah Risely-White, the newly appointed ISC Director, told me after the new regional water planning law passed, “The state is going to need all the help it can get.”  

Only through multiple centers of collective action undertaken with scientific integrity, prioritizing public health, and seeking justice, equity, accessibility, diversity, and inclusion in our planning processes and solutions, can we define how we can best equitably adapt to a future with much less water while preserving water for future generations of New Mexicans. The state will never solve these problems top down. Our collective action can and must. 

We need not reinvent. The Peace Engineering and Dr. Elinor Ostrom’s Governing the Commons concepts provide compatible frameworks for New Mexico’s robust new statewide regional water planning program. 

We must adhere to the letter and spirit of the law.  The core of our community problem of overuse is state government’s inability to sustainably govern the public water commons required for our lives.  But we can through collective action, work within existing law, to materialize community solutions.      

Presentations at the International Peace Engineering Symposium at UNM in June 2023 explain Peace Engineering and related topics.  All of the presentations are available on YouTube. I particularly recommend Drexel University Dean of Engineering Dr. Joseph Hughes’ enlightening introduction and University of New Mexico Dean of Engineering Dr. Donna Riley’s place-based definition.

Knowing and applying these concepts will get us a long way. Please visit our website again for more information, coming soon.