Background paper
Description
This report is intended to introduce the ecological, economic and sociopolitical realities that have shaped the way that freshwater resources and freshwater ecosystems have been “managed” in Canada, Mexico and the United States. It focuses primarily on the legal and management regimes that have evolved for boundary and transboundary surface waters and ecosystems. The regimes available for addressing groundwater—especially that in transboundary aquifers—are much less well developed.