EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Mexican diplomats say climate change has hindered them from settling a massive water debt to the United States, which is bringing economic hardship to South Texas farmers.
But a former U.S. federal official on Thursday offered a different explanation.
“One of the issues that we see is that domestic problems in Mexico are affecting what’s happening in the United States,” said Maria Elena Giner. “Water is owned by the (Mexican) government, yet they really don’t have good control of the reservoirs. The states are becoming much more active in opposing any water deliveries.”
One example is Chihuahua, which border Texas and New Mexico. Ninety percent of the water in Chihuahua reservoirs is being utilized by locals, while only 10 percent goes to feed Rio Grande tributaries, said Giner, former U.S. Commissioner for the International Boundary and Water Commission.
Mexico is required to deliver 1.75 million acre-feet of Rio Grande water to the United States every five years under a 1944 binational treaty. With less than six months left for the cycle to close, Mexico owes 1 million acre-feet.
Closed-door negotiations continue between the two countries to meet the deadline, even though the official line from Mexico is that water debt from one five-year cycle can be carried over to the next five-year cycle.
But the Trump administration is pressing for payment and threatening tariffs if Mexico doesn’t comply. Giner said pressure is likely to continue and become part of a revised U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
“Ninety percent (of the water) was being used in Chihuahua and wasn’t being shared. So, they had water to share,” Giner said at a panel discussion part of the Borderplex Alliance’s 2025 Global Border Summit. “This is how egregious that relationship had gotten […] This is why this issue will be affecting those negotiations.”
Giner, who has followed Mexican politics since the Carlos Salinas de Gortari administration of 1988-1994, said Mexico has invested in developing agriculture but not in making water management more efficient.
This has created a bigger problem south of the border when it comes to meeting its water treaty obligations with the United States because those additional Mexican farms require more water.
She said former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador made large investments in his “pet projects” including a new oil refinery and his signature Maya Train multibillion-dollar tourist railroad, but not on the northern border where industry is and from where the water debt is paid to the U.S.
The former IBWC leader finds some encouragement in hearing new Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum talk about improving water management.
Giner and other panelists also addressed the threat of U.S. tariffs on Mexico. She said administration officials want to see sustained Mexican progress on stemming the flow of fentanyl and migrants to the United States.
The administration also is serious about relocating manufacturing from overseas and even Mexico back to the interior of the United States.
“Traditionally, the narrative is, we have these U.S. companies in Mexico and these communities grew because of that trade relationship,” she said. “Now they look at you and say, ‘we don’t want those companies there. We want them to come to Middle America — not to the border, not to the U.S. right over the border, but to Middle America.”
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