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The Global Water Partnership has defined Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) as “a process which promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources in order to maximize economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems and the environment.” To achieve the goals of IWRM, a number of tools must be used, among which science and technology play a crucial role, particularly in river basins where water conflicts are commonplace. Most often, conflict arises between upstream and downstream water users due to the resource scarcity. This has been the case of two of the most strategically important river basins in Mexico: the Lerma-Chapala basin and the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande basins. In the first of these cases, simulation and optimization models were used to build consensus between water users and to define a set of rules for the integrated operation on the system, according to water availability. In the second case, a number of innovations were introduced to accommodate the volume of water allocated to the USA in the water availability study, the development of a novel approach for monthly water budgets, and a statistical approach that explicitly recognizes trends, cyclical behavior, and randomness in the natural flow regime. These innovations have been adopted by water users in the Rio Bravo basin and have been used to define water policy in the region. |
