IBC Bank & Commerce Bank Keynote Speaker Series Explores Significance of U.S.-México 1944 Water Treaty

The U.S.-México Water Treaty as a constitutional document was the focus of the next Texas A&M International University (TAMIU) IBC Bank and Commerce Bank 2024-2025 Keynote Speaker Series, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024.

Dr. Stephen P. Mumme, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Colorado State University, presented his lecture titled, "U.S.-México 1944 Water Treaty as a Constitutional Document," in the Student Center Ballroom. The event was free and open to the public. 

Dr. Mumme, a leading authority on U.S.-México water relations, delved into the enduring importance of the 1944 U.S. - México Water Treaty. The Treaty ranks among the most important agreements ever contracted between the United States and México.

For over 80 years, the Treaty has governed the water and boundary relations between the two countries and demonstrated its utility for developing and allocating water resources, protecting water quality, managing transboundary sanitation problems and, more recently, supporting vital ecosystems shared by the two countries.

As such, it has come to hold a quasi-constitutional stature in both countries as a foundational and adaptable document that, since its consolidation in the mid-1970's, is impervious to textual change but available for adaptation to new and unforeseen challenges should the two governments, acting jointly, agree.  Dr. Mumme's lecture explores this theme and explains how and why the treaty has come to enjoy such a unique and important status for both México and the United States.

Dr. Mumme’s career spans over four decades of teaching and research on comparative environmental politics and policy, with a focus on U.S. - Mexican water and environmental relations. He served as a faculty member at Colorado State University from 1983 to 2024. In addition to his seminal work, Border Water: The Politics of U.S. - México Transboundary Water Management, 1945-2015 (University of Arizona Press, 2023), he has authored influential studies such as Apportioning Groundwater along the U.S. - México Border (UCSD, 1988) and co-authored Statecraft Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy Making (Westview, 1988) with Alan Lamborn.

His research has appeared in numerous prestigious academic journals, including the Political Research Quarterly, Policy Studies Journal, Policy Studies Review, Publius, Social Science Journal, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Environmental Politics, Natural Resources Journal, Journal of Environment and Development, Tulane Journal of Environmental Law, Latin American Perspectives, Journal of Borderlands Studies, Frontera Norte, Región y Sociedad, Denver Water Law Review, International Journal of Sustainable Society, Globalizations, Journal of Water Law, and Latin American Research Review, among others.

He has also authored numerous book chapters and opinion pieces - some of the latter appearing in The Hill, Health Affairs Blog, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, The Denver Post, The Arizona Republic, Ms. Magazine, The Conversation, Tucson Citizen, and the Arizona Daily Star.

Since 2018, he has been a non-resident research scholar with the U.S. - México Center at the James Baker Institute for Policy Studies at Rice University. His recent work, “Troubled Waters: Recent Challenges to the 1970 U.S. - México Boundary Treaty” (with Regina Bouno) and “Treaty and Non-Treaty Mechanisms for Resolving the Rio Grande River Water Debt Dilemma” (with Oscar Ibañez), has focused on the water politics of the Rio Grande River.

In 2021, he was awarded the Association for Borderlands Studies Lifetime Achievement Award, honoring his decades of scholarship and commitment to U.S.- México environmental relations.

For additional information, please contact the Center for the Study of Western Hemispheric Trade at TAMIU at 956.326.2820, email cswht@tamiu.edu, or visit https://www.tamiu.edu/cswht.