Columbia River Treaty

Future predictions indicate that the United States and Canada water demands in the Columbia Basin will increasingly exceed water availability. These water demands include those of agriculture, municipalities, industry, hydro-power generation, fish habitat and fish passage, and recreational uses. The gap between supply and demand is fueled by the fact that current approaches to water resources management do not adequately address the inherent challenges posed by the complex water demands of the region. Failure to address management will continue to degrade a basin's integrity, cause social harm, impact the economy of the region, and ultimately could result in unsustainability of the water resources in the Columbia River Basin.

A pivotal factor in this effort will be the potential for notice of the ten-year countdown to termination of the US-Canada Columbia River Treaty in 2014. Although notice from either country is by no means inevitable, the fact that certain flood control provisions automatically end in 2024 make some type of action likely. This provides a unique opportunity to comprehensively address the concerns of the basin. Many of these concerns were not on the table in the original treaty in 1964.

The Center is a partner in the Universities Consortium on Columbia Basin Governance, a collaboration among representatives of the University of Idaho, Oregon State University, Washington State University, University of Montana, and University of British Columbia, formed to develop a research program to inform, guide and shape decisions making and even influence policy in decisions concerning the Columbia River Treaty. The broader interest served will be a greater understanding of how international river basins may respond to growing uncertainty in the future supply, demand and health of their water resource.

In preparation for a 2009 symposium, graduate students in the Natural Resources Conflict Resolution Program assessed the prospects to revise and update the Columbia River Treaty.
See Managing Transboundary Natural Resources: An Assessment of the Need to Revise and Update the Columbia River Treaty (668KB PDF)

Additionally the Center is a co-sponsor and participant in the Second Annual Symposium on Transboundary River Governance in the Face of Uncertainty: The Columbia River Treaty 2014, convened in Corvallis, Oregon, in November 2010.