Reclaiming a Fractured Flow: Identifying Policy Barriers and Opportunities for Green Infrastructure in Ambos Nogales

Abstract

With the global explosion of urbanization, flooding due to expanding impervious surfacescreates public health hazards, damages and disrupts economies in regions undergoing rapid development. Conventional hard-path infrastructures and reactive recovery strategies are inadequate for addressing stormwater management issues in the long term, and oftentimes they fail to consider social and environmental disparities among city residents or make them worse. Mitigating urban hazards and the compounding threats of climate change requires bolstering community capacity to adapt to and recover from disasters before they occur, in ways that are integrated into urban planning and political processes. Green Infrastructure (GI)—the use of natural, permeable materials and strategies to manage stormwater through in situ infiltration— has gained traction for its potential to mitigate negative impacts and provide a wide array of environmental and social benefits. However, there remain significant challenges to GI adoption at the watershed level—the scale at which these techniques are most effective—particularly across political boundaries. A network of actors in the sister cities of Ambos Nogales, bisected by the contentious Mexico-United States border, are pursuing GI to deal with severe flooding and water contamination problems exacerbated during monsoon storms that overwhelm current binational conveyance infrastructures. However, complex structural and political limitations have stunted recent efforts at crossboundary collaboration and planning. This thesis examines de jure and de facto barriers to the adoption of a GI design as set forth by the North American Development Bank’s Border 2020 Program. It first sketches the political-economic and historical dynamics underlying mismatched environmental regulation and planning policies between the two cities, examining shortcomings of a policy-based adaptation approach. It then utilizes extensive documentary and qualitative research, including key informant interviews, a survey and focus group with local stakeholders, to identify existing and potential opportunities for GI advancement across the divided Nogales landscape. The report describes potential project and incentive-based interventions and presents grassroots and informal networks as key strengths in a push towards GI. This study and resulting data-dissemination and GI-implementation efforts provide novel insights and support for engaged local actors and have implications for similar transboundary cities. Its findings advance understudied aspects within multiple literatures—urban political ecology, environmental justice, and critiques of racial capitalism—by examining their nexus in the context of a bordered landscape. They contribute to broader discussions around GI and transboundary water management, including questions about the potential benefits and/or pitfalls of GI and the functionality of decision-making networks across political-physical boundaries. Supporting place-based interventions through the input of stakeholders often left out of the conversation, our findings bolster the exchange of knowledge and development of capacities necessary to address shared challenges in the region.