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Climate change and the future of western US water governance

Nature Climate Change volume 12, pages 108–110 (2022)Cite this article

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Water management in the western United States is rooted in an adversarial system that is highly sensitive to climate change. Reforms are needed to ensure water management is efficient, resilient and equitable moving forward.

However, these settlers were not occupying empty land. The people indigenous to the continent had occupied these lands since time immemorial, making extensive use of the water now being claimed by the newcomers. To make room, the United States entered into government-to-government agreements with American Indian tribes, wherein the tribes agreed to surrender billions of hectares of land in exchange for the promise that they could reserve some small fragment of their aboriginal domain as their permanent homeland2. These reserved homelands included water rights that have come to be known as reserved water rights3. Together, the prior appropriation and reserved water rights doctrines form the totality of water law in the west.

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Fig. 1: Irrigation in the Snake River Plain of Idaho.

Timothy Swope / Alamy Stock Photo

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Acknowledgements

D.R.H.-H. acknowledges that he lives and makes his living in the aboriginal homeland of the Nimi’ipuu (Nez Perce) and Schitsu’umsh (Coeur d’Alene) peoples and that the University of Idaho’s main campus is situated within the boundaries of the Nez Perce Tribe’s unceded 1855 Reservation. These Tribal Nations are distinct, sovereign, legal and political entities with their own powers of self-governance and self-determination. Honour the treaties; “[g]reat nations, like great men, should keep their word” (Federal Power Commission. v. Tuscarora Indian Nation 362 U.S. 99, 142 (1960) (J. Black, dissenting)).

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  1. University of Idaho College of Law, Moscow, ID, USA

    Dylan R. Hedden-Nicely

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Correspondence to Dylan R. Hedden-Nicely.

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D.R.H.-N. consults with individual water users and tribal governments on issues related to water rights and water resources management. D.R.H.-N. contributed to this Comment in his own capacity, and any views expressed are his own and not those of his clients.

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Hedden-Nicely, D.R. Climate change and the future of western US water governance. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 108–110 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01141-3

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