Growing Water Smart: Advancing Water Resilience Through Collaborative Integration of Water Resources Management and Land Use Planning

Communities across the Southwestern United States (US) and Northern Mexico are making critical decisions regarding how they create long-term water resilience, including by reducing water demand and diversifying water supplies in the face of scarcity. There are several emerging frameworks encouraging collaborative governance approaches to water scarcity, such as Collaborative Water Governance and Adaptive Water Governance; however, examples of ongoing implementation of these frameworks by local governments in academic literature are less prevalent. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by sharing case studies and practitioner recommendations resulting from Growing Water Smart (GWS)—a training and assistance program for local communities to conduct collaborative water resilience action planning across jurisdictional borders, as well as between the historically separated disciplines of water resources management and land use planning. This paper presents and assesses the GWS curriculum as a model for local, cooperative responses to water scarcity, grounded in Collaborative Water Governance, Adaptive Governance, and related frameworks. This paper utilizes primary GWS program documents, firsthand participant perspectives, and direct practitioner experiences to present three case studies of GWS communities working across disciplinary and jurisdictional borders: a regionally collaborative facilitation process and intergovernmental agreement regarding water exports in the San Luis Valley of Colorado; a regional GWS workshop and emerging county-wide convening of jurisdictions within the Verde Watershed of central Arizona; and binational collaboration across the US-Mexico border through a workshop between the cities of Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora, resulting in a deepened understanding of shared effluent flows. Finally, this paper posits that the GWS model initiates more collaborative and informed decision-making, builds capacity for localities through the support of third-party conveners and facilitators, and maximizes the limited financial and human resources available to local jurisdictions—resulting in a valuable and replicable process to advance water resilience across disciplinary and jurisdictional borders.