Water Accountability, Environmental Security, and “Adaptation Interactions”: Explaining Water Right Enforcement Capacity Among Western States

Abstract

This chapter provides the theoretical argument to explain the variation in capacity western states have developed in response to scarcity. At the core of the argument, is that water accountability, which captures the pressure on state agencies and sub-state agencies, such as irrigation districts, to enforce water rights and take steps to protect those rights through a variety of means, has been unequally distributed in the region. The amount of demand for the protection of water rights varies across time and space, and is largely an outcome of the combined impact of “adaptation interactions” and the threat of securitization of water by the federal government. I advance an argument that explains the regulatory variations across the sample states in how they react to unauthorized water use. The core of this project is an evaluation of the institutions charged with enforcing water rights, and their capacity to deal with the water crisis across the American West—a crisis that has been well-documented, debated, and discussed for decades within the region. How well prepared states are to manage the various outcomes of this crisis is a critical concern for policymakers, interest groups, and scholars, given that the current water crisis is likely to worsen.