Toward effective river basin management (RBM): The politics of cooperation, sustainability, and collaboration in the Delaware River basin

Creating institutions to manage shared waterways at the basin scale, instead of as a patchwork of fragmented political jurisdictions, has long held attraction for water managers and political scientists. Basin-scale planning, management, and governance, the scholarly consensus runs, can promote cooperative management of shared water resources, facilitate management on an ecological rather than political basis, and better engage a diverse set of stakeholders. Yet in practice, River Basin Management (RBM) has proven difficult to institute and often produced disappointing results, being either too weak to be effective or too technocratic. The case of the Delaware River basin in the United States is a noteworthy exception. RBM in the Delaware basin has taken the form of a capable but inclusive inter-jurisdictional commission that has almost eliminated previously widespread conflict between riparian states; generally improved water quality and ecosystem protection; and empowered civil society. Yet this effectiveness stemmed from a messy political process marked by tension and competition between central, state, and local levels of government. Harnessing this tension to forge a durable, adaptable institutional framework proved to be key to the relative success of RBM in the Delaware basin, providing lessons to inform the management of shared watersheds elsewhere. •The Delaware River basin in the northeastern United States is the site of one of the longest-running and most successful experiments in River Basin Management (RBM).•The Delaware basin is managed by a unique federal-state compact organization that has successfully prevented and resolved water conflicts, improved water quality, and engaged a diverse set of water users.•Competition and mistrust between state and federal government were driving forces behind RBM in the Delaware.