Rescaling water governance - Governing Transboundary Waters: Canada, the United States, and Indigenous Communities - page 88

framework, which dominated the Commission during its first 50 years, to embrace
a broader governance approach. During the earlier years of the IJC, the governance
structure had a narrower scope and, subsequently, operated with much less
infrastructure. In fact, the original BWT calls for only two secretaries, and engineers
“as required”. Subsequently, support staff to perform operational duties did not
appear at the IJC until the second half of the century. As one former Commissioner
explained:
We dealt with dams and other things, so you needed somebody who was an
engineer. And because you dealt with legal issues, you had a treaty and
governance issues, you needed some law experience.
This governance structure, he continued, “fostered a quasi-judicial and technical
body”. In the 1970s, however, additional staff were brought in to reflect a more
multidisciplinary approach to water management and the need for broader expertise
to assess reports and deliberate on references and applications. This broader approach
exists to this day.
The Water Quantity/Quality Boards have served their (narrowly defined)
purpose relatively well. However, as discussed in Chapter 3, the original boards
were largely fragmented and had limited capacity. Rather than dealing with water
issues holistically, the IJC addressed quantity and quality issues as separate entities.
As one senior IJC staff member noted on the Watershed Boards' attempt to remedy
this division:
[The Watershed Boards reflect] a growing recognition of integration. You
can't just sort of separate and say, “Okay, well this group will deal with water
quality, and that group's going to deal with water quantity” because they're
related. And then, after all of that, trying to weave that into a structure and
approach that makes sense without stepping on everybody else's toes.
The earlier compartmentalized style largely reflects the type of governance approach
at the time of creation (se e Table 3.1) . The first move to address water quality on
a large scale was with the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement in 1972. Similarly,
the first “local actors” made their way into the IJC structure around this time. An
IJC career employee from Washington, DC reflected on the first engagement of
local actors:
One of the first examples of “local” players becoming involved in IJC issues
was on the Point Roberts project - [a] Professor at Western Washington
University, was on a study board. That was sort of my first introduction to
actually having somebody that wasn't a government person.
The Point Roberts Reference exemplifies the beginning of a multidisciplinary and
multijurisdictional approach to water governance within the IJC.