In many arid regions of Latin America and North America, research teams are conducting studies on how water governance actors and networks are confronting the challenges of global change, including climate change and globalizing markets. Water governance actors—water managers, farmers and irrigators, non-governmental organizations, urban communities, and rural inhabitants—in these arid regions on the whole are knowledgeable and skilled in managing water supply and innovating new ways of meeting water demand, and they tend to be sophisticated users of climate information. However, less is known about the adaptation strategies that seek to achieve water security and environmental sustainability that are effective in these arid regions, and there is even less systematic knowledge about the adaptive capacity of water governance networks. In short, this project probes how adaptation and water security can be measured.
