Month: January 2018

The Columbia River Treaty was an innovative agreement to coordinate management of the Columbia River to maximize benefits and equitably share them between the US and Canada.  It has been recognized as an excellent example of trans-boundary integrated water resources management, the concept that river basins be managed as integrated systems so that the total benefits are greater than would be the case if each country managed purely on its own narrow self interest, and then those benefits can be equitably shared.  When the Treaty was ratified in 1964, it did not adequately account for fisheries, river ecology, and the interests of tribes and first nations.  The impending treaty renewal has been widely seen as providing an opportunity to update the treaty by including consideration of these issues.  There are scientific uncertainties regarding impacts of dams and potential to restore fisheries on the river and its tributaries, the benefits of flood storage in Canadian dams, etc, which merit attention.  And looming over all treaty-related deliberations now is the recent change in US administrations, introducing uncertainty about whether the US will respect the cooperative nature of the last five decades of trans-boundary management of the Columbia River and approach updating of the agreement in a collaborative manner.

A group of scientists supported by representatives of First Nations and Tribes from Canada and the United States held a workshop at the Centre for Canadian Studies and Institute of International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley in April 2017 to develop recommendations for effectively integrating science into the treaty renewal process.

A team of active researchers in the Mekong have published a paper, Changing sediment budget of the Mekong: Cumulative threats and management strategies for a large river basin, available for free downloads until 15 February.

Abstract
Two decades after the construction of the first major dam, the Mekong basin and its six riparian countries have seen rapid economic growth and development of the river system. Hydropower dams, aggregate mines, flood-control dykes, and groundwater-irrigated agriculture have all provided short-term economic benefits throughout the basin. However, it is becoming evident that anthropic changes are significantly affecting the natural functioning of the river and its floodplains. We now ask if these changes are risking major adverse impacts for the 70 million people living in the Mekong Basin. Many livelihoods in the basin depend on ecosystem services that will be strongly impacted by alterations of the sediment transport processes that drive river and delta morpho-dynamics, which underpin a sustainable future for the Mekong basin and Delta.

Drawing upon ongoing and recently published research, we provide an overview of key drivers of change (hydropower development, sand mining, dyking and water infrastructures, climate change, and accelerated subsidence from pumping) for the Mekong’s sediment budget, and their likely individual and cumulative impacts on the river system. Our results quantify the degree to which the Mekong delta, which receives the impacts from the entire connected river basin, is increasingly vulnerable in the face of declining sediment loads, rising seas and subsiding land. Without concerted action, it is likely that nearly half of the Delta’s land surface will be below sea level by 2100, with the remaining areas impacted by salinization and frequent flooding. The threat to the Delta can be understood only in the context of processes in the entire river basin. The Mekong River case can serve to raise awareness of how the connected functions of river systems in general depend on undisturbed sediment transport, thereby informing planning for other large river basins currently embarking on rapid economic development.