Towards adaptive water governance in dryland social-ecological systems : the case of the Rio del Carmen watershed

Drylands are ecologically restricted by water scarcity, limiting the water ecosystem services that can contribute to human well-being. At the same time, the 2.5 billion people living in drylands are considered the poorest and most marginalized people in the world. Given this challenging context, drylands, as coupled social-ecological systems, are prone to suffer harm from non-linear stressors such as droughts, climate change, as well as the mismanagement of water ecosystem services, with important implications for livelihoods. Adaptive water governance has the potential to increase dryland resilience in the face of uncertainty, through institutional arrangements that enable flexibility, iteration, subsidiarity, and collaboration. However, when advancing adaptation efforts, water governance assessments and reforms tend to fail because of a lack of a comprehensive analysis of the social-ecological context and its complexities. To provide important insights to strengthen dryland resilience, this thesis analyses water governance in the Rio del Carmen watershed in the Chihuahuan Desert, Mexico. Based on primary data from semi-structured interviews and survey research, this thesis explores how stakeholders perceive water ecosystem services and how water governance regulates their access; the governance vulnerabilities that undermine dryland adaptation; and the potential that stakeholders have to overcome them and enable adaptive water governance. Results show that formal institutions that do not consider informal institutions (including stakeholder perceptions, farming practices, religious beliefs, and corruption) when addressing local needs, undermine the effectiveness of governance. In the Rio del Carmen watershed, this has led to impacts on both the environment and society in the form of water overexploitation, grassland loss, water mismanagement, legal breaches, and social clashes. Findings suggest that developing a common awareness about water ecosystem services among stakeholders has the potential to engage them and ultimately help establish a formal network guided by adaptive governance approaches. Accordingly, this thesis derives three principles for moving towards adaptive water governance, highlighting the need to recognise the exposure and sensitivity to societal and climate stressors, and to adjust the institutional setting to these context-specific issues. The principles aim to enhance the implications of resilience theory for scholars and practitioners working on dryland resilience and adaptation, so the expansion and degradation of drylands can be better addressed.