Water use and water management policy in the Chihuahuan Desert Ecoregion

This white paper provides an introduction to water resources and water management in the Chihuahuan Desert Ecoregion, with a focus on over-arching and determinative trends in water use patterns and water management policy and their socio-economic under-pinnings. Section I is an overview of the factors that have historically influenced water use and water management policy in both the U.S. and Mexican portions of the ecoregion. The existing legal and institutional framework for water management is described in Section II. Section III provides aggregated data on water use patterns in the ecoregion, based on readily available data, while Section IV discusses projected trends in water use. Two special issues are examined in Section V: water quality and inequities in access to water. The current politics surrounding water management policy are reviewed briefly in Section VI. The paper concludes with a look at potential opportunities for change in water management policy that may lead to more sustainable water resource management—for humans and for biodiversity