Abstract

KAUFFER, Edith. Between an erratic IWRM and multifaceted water insecurities: The transboundary Hondo river basin in Mexican policy. Tecnol. cienc. agua [online]. 2020, vol.11, n.6, pp.127-176.  Epub June 15, 2024. ISSN 2007-2422.  https://doi.org/10.24850/j-tyca-2020-06-04.

Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and Water Security (WS) are two components, defined at the international scale, that Mexico has imported as essential pillars of its water policy. Social and political research proposes to analyze relevant local case studies, especially when IWRM institutions have been created for the purpose of its implementation. Located in southern Mexico, the Hondo river basin, which is a transboundary basin shared with Belize and Guatemala, is an instructive case study. This paper analyzes how both international water principles (IWRM and WS) are implemented, from local stakeholders’ perspectives, in the Mexican part of the Hondo river basin, through Mexico’s recently created Basin Commission. The paper is based upon extensive fieldwork, over the several years, that consisted of interviews, IWRM-policy ethnography, and examination of written sources on Mexican water policy. The article deals first with theoretical and current debates in international literature regarding IMRM, WS, and their Mexican versions. Next, the article reveals the existence of an erratic IWRM in the Mexican part of the Hondo river basin, as well as a lack of knowledge about the water-security concept. That lack coexists in parallel with the emergence of a variety of multifaceted water insecurities that are nevertheless prone to generate local actions to resolve acute problems through WS.

Keywords : Hondo river basin; IWRM; water security; basin commission; water policy.

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