Given these complexities, it seems logical and useful for continental water management agencies to examine three critical questions: (1) Will the arid states and sovereign nations of southwestern North America be able to resolve water scarcity through renegotiation and amendments to the Colorado River Compact and the U.S.-Mexico Water Treaty alone? (2) Does the declining capacity of North America’s major aquifers (such as the Ogallala) justify new water resource management practices and coordinated, cross-jurisdictional oversight? (3) Given the continental gap between scarcity and abundance, will agreements and treaties in water-abundant regions (such as the Great Lakes) endure into the mid-21st century and beyond?

To answer these questions, three high-priority steps are needed. First, we recommend convening a summit of key pact and treaty leaders to holistically assess pact and treaty vulnerabilities in light of ongoing and anticipated system changes. One potential vulnerability we anticipate is the tendency toward legalistic, top-down structures that could undermine cooperation. This cooperation and mutually beneficial negotiations characterized the creation of the Great Lakes Compact and, in our view, sets it apart from other continental pacts and treaties.

Second, we recommend a thorough review of the recent decision of the US Supreme Court in Texas vs. New Mexico and Colorado to understand how it can affect other agreements and arrangements when they diverge from the interests of the federal government. This review would address and clarify to a broad audience the challenges in designing transboundary water institutions that lead to positive, equitable and environmentally sustainable water allocation.

Third, we recommend further research in the continental transboundary basins highlighted here and elsewhere on the long-term consequences of unchecked (and potentially increasing) water use under increasing climate-related disruption of hydrological regimes. Most agreements and treaties are single-basin in nature. Given the growing scale of the threats, new thinking is needed on the contours and potential role of transboundary institutions that collectively address the needs and interests of multiple sovereign nations, states, and provinces at a multi-basin level. In particular, research is needed to fully understand the range of consequences when investigations into equitable renegotiations of existing agreements and treaties, or attempts to craft new agreements and treaties, are either explored or rejected.

We do not advocate expanding the reach of the Colorado River Compact or the U.S.-Mexico Water Treaty through expanded jurisdiction or the extraction of new water resources outside the basin, nor do we advocate breaking the Great Lakes Compact by diverting excess water from the Great Lakes Basin. We advocate for the long-term health and simultaneous sustainability of multiple continental freshwater systems by calling on policymakers to clearly articulate and reiterate the history of existing agreements and address their strengths and weaknesses in the context of continental and global water resource management.