Michael A. Reuter Director, N.A. Freshwater Program &

Great Rivers Partnership

www.nature.org/greatrivers

mreuter@tnc.org

America’s Great

Watershed

Charting a Course for

Sustainability in the

Mississippi River System

5th Partnership Conference ●

Memphis ● Nov. 15, 2011

Extinction Scarcity

Hypoxia

REPORT: 307 of the 647 (coastal) ecosystems now

experience stressful or lethal oxygen levels,

threatening commercial and recreational fisheries.

There were just 12 hypoxic regions in US coastal

waters prior to 1960.

REPORT: Multiple

environmental stressors such as

agricultural runoff, pollution

and invasive species threaten

the world's major rivers that

serve 80 per cent of the world's

population.

Between them, these rivers

provide water to over 5 billion

people who live near them,

besides providing a home to

thousands of species.

These stressors endanger the

biodiversity of 65 per cent of

the world's river habitats and

put thousands of aquatic

wildlife species at risk.

Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity C. J. Vörösmarty et al. Nature. Volume: 467, Pages: 555–561. 2010.

High Uncertainty.

MISSISSIPPI RIVER, IOWA

1839 1870 1993 2020

MISSISSIPPI

RIVER, LOUISIANA

REUTERS – INDUS River, Pakistan, 13

August 2010: UN estimates that the

humanitarian crisis is now larger than the

combined effects of the three worst natural

disasters to strike in the past decade.

ASSOCIATED PRESS – YELLOW River,

China, 12 August 2010: Death toll well over

1,000 in Gansu Province…10,000 people

are trapped in rising flood waters.

INDUS RIVER, PAKISTAN

YELLOW RIVER, CHINA

Diverse Values.

Climate

Food

Energy

Water

There are not many rivers, one for each of us,

but only this one river, and if we all want to stay here,

in some kind of relation to the river,

then we have to learn, somehow, to live together.

From Daniel Kemmis. Community and the Politics of Place. Univ. of Oklahoma Press. Norman, 1990

A New Approach?

Implications of High

Uncertainty and Diverse

Values: The Need for An

Honest Broker • Expand viable policy alternatives

through…

- Persistent stakeholder

engagement

- Collaborative scientific

evaluation

Adapted from Roger Pielke, Jr. The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics.

Cambridge University Press. New York, 2007.

A New Approach?

RESILIENCE thinking • Models of average conditions and

expectations of incremental growth

are misleading (vs. adaptive cycles

and major disturbances)

• Increasing efficiency is important

to economic viability, but must

consider broader system response

for sustainability

• Build capacity to work with change

Adapted from Brian Walker and David Salt. RESILIENCE thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a

Changing World. Island Press. Washington, DC, 2006.

A New Approach?

Integrated River Basin

Management • Coordinating conservation,

management and development of

water, land and related resources

across sectors within a given river

basin, in order to improve the

economic and social benefits

derived from water resources in an

equitable manner while preserving

and, where necessary, restoring

freshwater ecosystems.

Adapted from Global Water Partnership, 2000.

How Did We Get Here?

Ideas, Choices, Commitment e.g., Mississippi River & Tributaries Project

―$12.9 billion invested since 1928

―$353.6 billion in flood damages prevented

since 1928

―10 million acres of farmland, plus urban

centers, protected from flooding

―27 to 1 return on investment

―Approximately 4 million people protected

―$2.9 billion saved annually in

transportation benefits

“Efforts to sustain

the Mississippi River

system will require a

unified vision and

intergenerational

commitment to

realize that vision.”

Where Are We Going?

Major General Walsh:

A Watershed Approach

Meridian Survey:

Stakeholder Expectations

Need shared vision for the Mississippi River Basin

that encompasses the whole system in an integrated

way, includes ecological, social, and economic

factors, and leads to commonly accepted priorities;

Need more effective institutional structure(s) to

coordinate management of the river and turn the

vision into reality;

Need institutional arrangements that break down the

many unresponsive, unconnected silos;

Overcome complexity by linking together disparate

pieces rather than creating comprehensive structure

that reaches across the whole basin

America’s Inner Coast Summit

A Unique Gathering

117 Participants

―76 Organizations

―20 States

Work Groups

―Vision

―Stakeholders

―Communications

―Science

―Projects

More Info: http://www.conference.ifas.ufl.edu/AICS/

Focus on Sustainability and Collaboration

―Navigation, Flood Control, Cultural and Social

Resources, Environment

Major General

Michael Walsh

America’s Great Watershed Initiative

Steering

Committee

Vision & Case

Vision without execution is hallucination.

– Thomas Edison

AGWI: State of the Basin Indicators

IRBM Process Integration

Scale

Timing (Sequencing)

Participation

Capacity

Watershed Health Navigation Infrastructure

Flood Risk

Agriculture

Recreation

Water Quantity & Quality

Habitat Connectivity

Biodiversity

Wastewater

The Danube River Commission

Most International River Basin in the World

19 countries

81 million inhabitants

Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition

people have to work at.

– Maya Angelou

Great Rivers Partnership “Great Rivers That Work for People and Nature”

Zambezi River

Yangtze River

Paraguay-Parana Rivers

Mississippi River

Magdalena River

The mission of the

Great Rivers

Partnership is to bring

together diverse

partners and best

science to expand

options for achieving

the sustainable

management and

development of the

world’s Great Rivers

and their basins. We

seek shared solutions

to common land- and

water-use dilemmas,

recognizing the

inescapable linkages

that connect our

economy, human well-

being and ecosystem

sustainability.

Tapajos (Amazon) River

Global Leadership

e.g., Yangtze-Mississippi Exchange based on USACE-USGS Long Term

Resource Monitoring Program

Great Rivers Partnership “Great Rivers That Work for People and Nature”

“We will be known by the tracks we leave.”

— Dakota Proverb