Community in the Colorado River Basin

Something historic is happening right now in the Colorado River Basin. Domestic and international negotiations over the next several years will yield a new management framework for the Colorado River system from which more than forty-million people draw the essence of life. Climate change looms over these negotiations—an ongoing twenty-one-year megadrought unprecedented in the historical record. Although the basin is a place of incredible diversity—a “community of communities”—you might not know it from institutions devised thus far for Colorado River governance. Some progress has been made with these institutions in recent decades, and collaboration has been instrumental, including with tribal sovereigns whose ancestral homelands and modern reservations span across the basin. But more needs to be done. This Article advocates for an elevated commitment to collaboration in the new management framework’s negotiation and beyond. Next-generation Colorado River governance institutions should be created that align with the whole community of communities.