Rescaling water governance - Governing Transboundary Waters: Canada, the United States, and Indigenous Communities - page 99

rejected the original Clinton draft of the BWT, which gave the IJC greater
authority, in favor of the current model, which limits the arbitral powers of the
IJC and clearly upholds nation-state boundaries.
One could argue that the Watersheds Initiative attempts to subvert the Harmon
Doctrine's original influence over the IJC by de-emphasizing political borders and
prioritizing hydrological borders. However, it is unclear whether this shift in
governance fosters a change in identity for those living within the binational
watershed community. As discussed previously, increased security at the border
post-9/11 - and a general discourse of fear - has had notable impacts on com-
munities attempting to create a transnational watershed identity.
Even before the hardening of borders post-9/11, projects of creating
“transnational identities” had limited success. One such example of attempting to
redefine a physical space in people's geographic imagination is the two-decade-
long attempt to create a binational “Cascadia” identity that spans the border between
British Columbia and Washington. However, despite sustained efforts through
educational campaigns and propaganda (including scores of maps and pamphlets),
the concept of a binational Cascadia community remains unrealized. Both the
environmental and business-led Cascadia projects remain largely in the imaginations
of those directly involved in the projects and have not translated to the wider
community (Alper, 1996; Blatter et al. , 2001; Sparke, 2006). That said, as explored
in Part Two, the 'Salish Sea' has increasingly captured the geographic imagination
of its residents.
At a smaller scale within the Cascadia region, several community actors have
joined forces to address transboundary water pollution of the Abbotsford-Sumas
aquifer, spanning British Columbia and Washington. Promoting a general
understanding of watersheds and an appreciation that their border communities
share water issues is central to the transboundary committee. However, despite a
decade-long coordination, and numerous grants to connect projects, the area
remains largely bound within a nation-state framework. The majority of the
people, although clearly cognizant that they live in a “border-town”, do not connect
(ecologically, hydrologically, or socially) to the communities on the “other” side
of the border (Norman and Melious, 2008). In both of these regional cases, the
very real impacts of a hardened border - increased security post-9/11 - may have
dampened State-led efforts to create transboundary identities.
However, Part Two of this topic provides counter-examples to this “hardened”
border. Here I highlight how Indigenous communities have made great strides in
redefining their geographic spaces, (re)connecting their community to traditional
territories and promoting practices of self-determination and self-governance.
These cases are different, however, as the community members have historic ties
to the wider geographic region; the separation of the land into two countries is a
relatively recent phenomenon.
In the case of the IJC's International Watersheds Initiative, it is useful to question
the role of federal involvement in these regional projects when analyzing the general
absence of imagined (or real) transnational watershed identities. Some argue -