Trust, Risk, and Power in Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Collaborations

Abstract

In events and discussions about transboundary aquifer assessment, trust is often cited as an essential component of collaborative efforts. However, there is little discussion of what trust is, how it is built, what diminishes trust, and why it is so important. This study uses ethnographic research carried out between 2019 and 2021 with the Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Program (TAAP) to examine the role and significance of trust in U.S./Mexico TAAP collaborations. This study demonstrates that trust is best understood in relationship to power and risk. It examines the strengths and weaknesses of the TAAP program in managing asymmetrical relationships of power and unequal levels of risk in participation. In TAAP collaborations, the insistence on establishing trust should signal participants to consider and address the underlying issues of risk and power.

1. Introduction

In April 2019, the Binational Summit on Groundwater at the U.S./Mexico Border drew a lively crowd to the TecH2O Learning Center in El Paso, Texas. Scholars, governmental officials, water managers, and reporters from both sides of the U.S./Mexico border filed into the modern, angular, cement and glass building, were provided with a glossy program in either English or Spanish and a headset for simultaneous translation, and were directed to the main auditorium. Over the two days of the summit, participants arranged themselves along the curved wooden tables and navy office chairs in the auditorium seating to watch presentations and panel discussions regarding the important themes surrounding binational groundwater: data sharing, salinity, geohydrology, modeling, water law, watershed restoration, collaborative governance, etc. Throughout the groundwater summit, however, an unexpected theme emerged—trust. The Binational Summit in 2019 was my first introduction into binational efforts to understand shared groundwater resources, so I was surprised to hear the word trust repeated in so many panel presentations, keynotes, and discussions. I was not the only one who noticed. In her closing remarks, the then newly appointed Commissioner of the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), Jayne Harkins, commented that she had also not expected to hear the word “trust” so often at the Binational Summit. To newcomers to the world of binational groundwater collaborations, the emphasis on trust was surprising. Yet, the longer one works on issues of binational groundwater, the more one comes to expect conversations about data, water quality, and aquifer recharge will also include conversations about trust. In this paper, I examine the role of trust in the Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Program (TAAP) and contextualize its importance in relationship to power and risk.

The TAAP program was written into law by the U.S. government in 2006 with the signing of Public Law 109–448, the United States–Mexico Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Act [1]. The law authorized the study of priority transboundary aquifers along the U.S./Mexico border, an effort to be led by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the Water Resources Research Institutes of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. The law creating the TAAP program, however, was unilaterally developed and passed by the U.S. without agreement from corresponding Mexican institutions. In 2009, after nearly three years of binational negotiation, the TAAP program as a binational effort was established in The Joint Report of the Principal Engineers Regarding the Joint Cooperative Process United States–Mexico for the Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Program, known as the TAAP Cooperative Framework. The TAAP Cooperative Framework serves as a formal agreement to collaborate, establishes a central role for the IBWC and its Mexican counterpart CILA (Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas), and defines the rules of engagement agreed upon by both sites.

The TAAP program, at its inception and today, includes participation by members of state agencies such as IBWC/CILA, the USGS, and CONAGUA (Comisión Nacional del Agua), along with university scientists from both sides of the border. Regional TAAP efforts may also include local water authorities, such as the inclusion of JMAS (Junta Municipal de Agua y Saneamiento) and EL Paso Water in the Hueco Bolson and Mesilla/Conejos-Medanos TAAP working group. TAAP provides the foundation for the exchange of data between Mexico and the U.S. about groundwater resources mutually identified as priority aquifers that are shared across the border. Although the data exchange occurs through a legally codified framework supported by both nations, the success of the collaboration is uneven across time and space. Collaboration varies by working group. It may be successful for a stretch of time, then slow, or come to a grinding halt. There are false starts, restarts, and failures along with great successes. These inconsistencies reveal what is obscured by political and legal discussion of the program—that the binational data exchange depends on the social relationships between the participants. Throughout my participation in TAAP and transboundary water activities, the presence of trust in binational social relationships was repeatedly identified as the most important aspect of the binational cooperation. Despite the fact that the word “trust” comes up in nearly every binational waters event, there is little to no discussion about what is meant by the concept. What is trust? How is trust achieved? How is trust broken? Why is trust important?

The act of trusting, scholars have noted, is necessary for social life and essential to the functioning of relationships and institutions [2,3]. The importance of trust appears in multiple scholarly publications about the TAAP program and binational aquifer governance [4,5,6,7]. The meaning of trust in collaboration on issues of binational water, however, is not closely examined. Trust is a complex topic, and one that is recently receiving renewed attention in fields from economics and political science to sociology and evolutionary biology [1]. Some authors describe trust as a disposition, affect, or feeling that goes beyond rational, transactional calculations of risk [2,8]. Others argue that trust is informed by past experiences, but is, at its core, an anticipatory orientation towards the future [2,8,9]. One study identified and analyzed 126 definitions of trust, ending on the concise definition of “trust as confidence in the face of risk” [10]. I use Fink et al.’s useful definition of trust as a basis for my own working definition of trust in the context of TAAP collaborations: trust is the willingness to proceed with collaboration despite risks. By operationalizing Fink et al.’s “confidence” as “willingness to proceed with collaboration”, trust and mistrust become ethnographically observable as a set of practices that either halt or facilitate collaboration in the TAAP program.

In trust studies, symmetrical relationships and the domestic sphere have been emphasized, while trust in hierarchical relationships is underdeveloped [2]. This means that the relationship between trust and power is undertheorized. Yet, as medical anthropologist Harald Grimen states, “Analyses of trust that neglect power are naïve” [11]. To understand trust in asymmetrical relationships, it is necessary to consider the “nexus of power, trust, and risk” [11].

The concept of risk is present in both the Fink et al. definition of trust and my own working definition of trust. Unequal relationships of power amplify risk. It is important to note that power is not simply a dominating force, but is “an aspect of all relations among people” that operates differently at different scales [12]. Eric Wolf’s description of the four modalities of power help clarify how power is manifested at different scales. I condense his longer description here: (1) “the power of potency of capability that is seen to inhere in an individual”; (2) power “manifested in interactions and transactions among people and refers to the ability of an ego to impose its will in social action upon an alter”; (3) “power that controls the contexts in which people exhibit their capabilities and interact with others”; and (4) structural power that “manifest in relationships that not only operates within settings and domains but also organizes and orchestrates the settings themselves, and that specifies the direction and distribution of energy flows” [12]. Wolf further clarifies that structural power is related to Foucault’s definition of governance [12]. I will use these different scales of power in my analysis below as I identify sources of risk that are essential to understanding trust in TAAP collaborations.

The object of this article is to interrogate the meaning of trust in the TAAP binational collaborations, and to explicitly link the experience of trust and mistrust to the concept of power. Using ethnographic, interview, and document analysis data, I examine the factors that contribute to trust, and those that are detrimental to trust. I then contextualize the discussion of trust in relationships of power using the Framework for Assessing Power in Collaborative Governance Processes [13]. I show in which ways TAAP successfully negotiates relationships of power, and where it falls short. I then discuss the issue of risk and examine what is at stake in the binational groundwater collaborations. Ultimately, I argue that discussions of trust should cue TAAP participants to consider and discuss the underlying issues of risk and power at multiple scales to strength collaborative binational relationships.

2. Materials and Methods

The data for this article were collected as part of a larger ethnographic research project that examines the social and political context of water use, planning, and management on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border. This is an ongoing research project, so the results presented here are preliminary findings. Ethnographic research methods were used to collect the data presented in this work. Three elements are considered central to ethnographic research practices: participant observation, interviews, and analysis of relevant documents, archives, and scholarly literature [14]. Participant observation prioritized long-term emplacement, face-to-face interactions, taking part in daily activities and special events, and recording such interactions in fieldnotes [15]. Over the course of twenty-seven months between 2019 and 2021, I used participant observation to engage in a large array of events, meetings, and conversations related to local, regional, national, and international water use and management. These events included domestic and international, formal and informal, TAAP meetings. During this time, I managed New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute’s TAAP participation and reporting. I helped plan, attended, and presented at binational groundwater conferences and workshops. I was in frequent communication with other TAAP program participants about the program, the current state of cooperation and research, and the future goals of the program. The topics of the meetings, presentations, and conversations included: descriptions of the physical qualities of the aquifers and the quality of the water they contain, the binational exchange of data planned and carried out during this time, discussions of the successes and obstacles to TAAP collaboration, debates about what kind of governance systems might be most appropriate for binational aquifer management in the future, the role of science in water management, and more. I recorded the observations made during fieldwork in ethnographic fieldnotes [16].

Ethnographic fieldnotes provide the bulk of the data used in this article. The process of recording ethnographic fieldnotes includes taking record of the event while in process to the extent possible, then typing up detailed, descriptive notes and reflections after the event. Fieldnotes include record of the words spoken at a meeting, as well as careful observations of non-verbal communication. For example, my notes from the in-person, formal binational TAAP meeting in Juarez in 2019 included relevant information about where the meeting was held, who participated, and what was discussed. It also included notes on which topics of conversation were avoided in this setting, how people arrange themselves in space, notes on the tone of voice used throughout the meeting, non-verbal communicative signaling such as scowls, sideways glances, expressions of surprise, folding arms, etc. From an anthropological perspective, thick description of data on all kinds of social signaling is as important, if not more so, than the spoken transcript of official discussion topics.

I systematically analyzed the data collected through a process of “qualitative analytic coding” [16] using NVivo software. Using NVivo, I assigned each piece of text one or multiple codes and/or subcodes. I began by creating a code structure from the themes that I already knew would be important. For example, I created a code I call Governance. Nested under Governance are subcodes for different policies, including international treaties and minutes, and national policies such as Waters of the U.S. I also used “open coding”—designating descriptive codes for a wide range topics as they emerged in the data [16]—in order to allow unexpected patterns to emerge from the data. The process included “affective coding” [17] to capture emotions, conflict, and values present in the data. Under the code Affect, I use subcodes for Trust, Anger, Optimism, Fear, and more. The data set used for this article currently has 210 codes and subcodes, and will likely continue to grow. The process of coding is not just a matter of sorting by words—the word “power” does not have to be mentioned in a section of data to be coded as having a conceptual relationship to manifestations of power. I used my working definition of trust as “the willingness to proceed with collaboration despite risks” to guide my coding. As such, ethnographically recorded displays of hesitancy to proceed, or obstructing the collaborative process, were coded as relating to trust. Qualitative analytic coding, therefore, is a practice in analysis and interpretation of data, rather than merely sorting. Having analyzed and organized my data through qualitative analytic coding, I was able to pull out the most important themes and patterns relating to the idea of trust, power, and risk in the TAAP program.

I supplemented my ethnographic fieldnotes with four targeted semi-structured interviews [18] carried out in the spring of 2021 for the purpose of cross-checking the results of my ethnographic data analysis. I selected the interviewees using “purposeful sampling”, a technique that selects interviewees based on their knowledge and experience about a phenomenon, as opposed to randomized interviews intended to serve as a representative sample of a larger population [19]. The interviewees shared a combined forty-seven years of participation in the TAAP program. Two were government agency representatives and two were scholarly researchers. Two were from Mexico and two from the United States. I asked questions such as: What is your role in the TAAP program and how did you become involved? What is the role of trust in the TAAP program? Can you describe a time when trust was broken in binational collaborative efforts? What is at risk in binational collaborations? As the interviews were semi-structured, I did not strictly adhere to the interview script and instead allowed for the development of a natural conversation with appropriate follow-up questions. The interviews served to confirm or challenge the patterns in my ethnographic data, and provided additional data. I recorded the interviews either on Zoom or using a digital voice recorder, transcribed the interviews, and coded them in NVivo.

I also compiled and analyzed an archive of relevant documents. The compiled archive included foundational TAAP documents such as the 2009 Joint Report of the Principal Engineers Regarding the Joint Cooperative Process United States–Mexico for the Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Program, and the United States–Mexico Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Act of 2006. I also included scholarly articles published by TAAP researchers and popular coverage of TAAP activities from newspapers and online publications. Collecting data from three sources—fieldnotes, interviews, and documents—enabled me to cross-check the findings and validate the data through triangulation [19].

3. Results

In this section, I show the factors that contribute to trust and the factors that diminish trust identified in the data. I then demonstrate the link between trust and relationships of power, and use the Framework for Assessing Power in Collaborative Governance Processes [13] to examine how the TAAP program navigates relationships of power. I then show how the Framework falls short in its ability to identify important sources of power imbalances in the TAAP program.

3.1. What Promotes and Diminishes Trust

In the TAAP program, scholars and representatives from government institutions from both sides of the border join together to exchange data and carry out collaborative research on the shared aquifers. There is a common understanding amongst TAAP participants that trust is essential to the collaborative process. Through the process of applying qualitative analytic coding to the ethnographic data, interviews, and documents, patterns emerged that reveal what contributes to trust in TAAP collaborations, and what diminishes trust.

Table 1. Factors that contribute to and diminish trust.

Contributes to Trust	Diminishes Trust
Long-term Engagement	Unilateral Decision Making
Relationship Building	Pushing Agenda or Timeline
Face-to-Face Interactions	Controlling Funding
Transparency about Motivations	Unmet Expectations in Exchange
Common Goal	Turn-over of Participants
Clear Boundaries	Absence of Key Participants
Respect for Process	Disagreeable Personalities
Communication
Patience and Sensitivity
Successful Collaborations

Shows important factors revealed in the ethnographic data and interviews that can contribute to trust amongst TAAP collaborators. Many people in both formal interviews and informal conversations during fieldwork explained that trust was not automatically present in TAAP interactions from the start. It had to be established through relationship building through long-term engagement. For some TAAP collaborations, building a history of showing up, following through, and working together over the years resulted in a solid baseline of trust. Frequent face-to-face interactions were also cited as useful for building trust. In-person interactions that occur in formal TAAP meetings are important, as are informal face-to-face interactions such as fieldtrips organized on each side, and/or interacting with other participants at conferences. These factors increase confidence in one another by building familiarity at an interpersonal level, diminishing the perception of risk in the collaboration. Participants identified the need for transparency about motivations for carrying out research. Assurances that the information collected would be for the betterment of science and beneficial for both sides help establish confidence in the collaboration. Similarly, working together to establish mutually agreed upon common goals was identified as important for relationships of trust. Establishing clear boundaries about what the program was intended for, and could not be used for, was also essential. Importantly, establishing transparency about motivations, goals, and boundaries in the beginning of the relationship is not sufficient; TAAP participants emphasized the need to communicate and reaffirm these aspects of the collaboration throughout the collaborative process. In the ethnographic data, there were many examples of participants from both sides publicly reaffirming the goals and boundaries of the TAAP program. For instance, in the context of planning for a data exchange, there was a lively discussion regarding whether or not data on the topic of governance was appropriate to exchange within the boundaries of TAAP. In the end, both parties agreed not to include such data during that exchange. Respect for the processes set out in the TAAP Collaborative Framework also works to build trust (described in more detail below). Participants also identified the importance of the personal traits of patience and sensitivity to building trust. Patience in the process of establishing relationships of trust and other participants’ timelines is highly valued. Likewise, sensitivity to the needs, interests, and fears of the other side is important. Lastly, successful collaborations, including completed data exchanges, the establishment of work plans, and the publication of joint reports all contributed to feelings of trust and confidence in the group’s ability to further collaborate.

Table 1 shows that there are also clear patterns in the data about the factors that detract from trust. One factor that limits trust is unilateral decision making. An interviewee who was present for the very start of the TAAP program explained that this was a problem in the beginning as the United States passed Public Law 109–448, creating the TAAP program without input or collaboration with Mexico. Mexico, in turn, did not recognize this U.S. domestic law and insisted on collaboratively developing a binational framework. The TAAP Cooperative Framework therefore became “the bridging document in order to implement the TAAP in that binational arena.” Relatedly, the data also revealed that attempts by one side to push a specific research agenda or timeline harms trust. An example of this occurred at a binational TAAP meeting in 2019. After a long deliberation about next steps to exchange data, and the assertion by the Mexican participants that all other collaborations would be on hold until the completion of the data exchange, a U.S. newcomer to the TAAP project interrupted to insist on simultaneous engagement in another collaborative project. Pushback from both sides was immediately evident in body language—crossing arms, scowling, uncomfortable chuckles, and sideways glances. A long-term U.S.-based TAAP participant stepped in to smooth things over and shelve the suggested endeavor, but another participant later admitted she feared that years of work could have been unwittingly undone by the comment.

One side controlling funding can also damage trust. The U.S. TAAP law includes a provision that money for research on shared aquifers can fund Mexico-based research teams to collect data on the Mexican side of the border. Early attempts to fund studies in Mexico, however, were contentious. Contracts from the U.S. side had specific stipulations for deliverables, reporting, and timely information exchange. As one U.S.-based interviewee explained, “Mexico felt that we were trying to control them through payment of funds.” While the early study was successful, disagreements in the process damaged the relationship.

Additionally, unmet expectations in data exchanges can lead to mistrust. In formal TAAP meetings now, a one-time failure of the U.S. to provide what Mexico considered to be equivalent, current, and properly formatted data that occurred a decade ago still emerges in conversation as a source of mistrust and obstacle to moving forward with collaborative projects. The group now takes special care to clarify what data is available and what format it is most useful in before attempting to exchange data.

Other factors that limit trust are related to individual participants and personalities. The turn-over of personnel involved in the TAAP program can be problematic. Changes in administrations or ruling party can lead to changes in who holds important government offices, retirement of collaborators and scholars leaving for positions elsewhere all disrupt the continuity of relationships and necessitate rebuilding trust. Even when membership remains the same, the absence of key members in formal meetings can also cause mistrust by throwing into doubt the commitment of the individual to the collaboration. Lastly, disagreeable personalities can greatly affect the formation and dissolution of trusting relationships. In the data, traits such as being “pushy”, “domineering”, “forceful”, “impatient”, and “aggressive” were identified as having a detrimental effect on relationships of trust.

Each of these factors that negatively contribute to trust are distinct mechanisms, but I argue that they contribute to mistrust as each highlight existing power inequalities in ways that amplify the awareness of risk. Even personality traits such as being “pushy” are related to the threat of one side using its power to coerce the other side. It is significant that, in both formal and informal conversations about TAAP, and in my ethnographic field notes, the negative factors listed were generally discussed in relationship to the actions of the U.S., the party with more social, political, and economic power.

3.2. Why Is Trust Important?

The above data are useful for understanding how trust is established and maintained, but less revealing about why it is so important. I argue that trust is important in TAAP collaborations as it helps to mitigate unequal relationships of power. All social relationships are also relationships of power, but in the case of TAAP, the unequal relationship of power is intensified by the fact that the United States is a significantly more powerful player in global politics, is economically dominant, and is backed by the world’s most powerful military force. In this section, I use the Framework for Assessing Power in Collaborative Governance Processes [13] to demonstrate how the TAAP program manages unequal relationships of power, and where it falls short of that goal.

The Framework for Assessing Power in Collaborative Governance Processes identifies three arenas for power: formal authority (right to make decisions and take action), discursive legitimacy (ability to represent a discourse of social value), and resources (ability to deploy financial, material, and knowledge resources) (Purdy 2012). In regard to authority, the original U.S. domestic law that created the TAAP program without input from Mexico started the program off with unequal authority. Authority, however, can be negotiated. In the formation of the TAAP Cooperative Framework, representatives from the U.S. and Mexico set stipulations for the sharing of authority within the project after Mexico’s refusal to accept the unilateral authority of the United States. Formal authority in the TAAP program is therefore managed through the TAAP Cooperative Framework.

The category of discursive legitimacy is also relatively even on both sides. The U.S. and Mexico both appeal to the shared social values of protecting natural resources, binational cooperation, and scholarly advancement. The use of discourses about trust fits into this category—it is a socially salient idea that can be used to manage relationships of power and increase standing in an unequal relationship.

The category of resource-based power is less effectively managed in the TAAP program. Ideally, under the TAAP Cooperative Framework, both the United States and Mexico would agree on a priority aquifer, approve a particular study, each side would carry out data collection on their own side of the border using their own funds, and then the data would be shared and a joint report would be produced. In practice, the U.S. has significantly more funding, personnel, and institutional infrastructure to devote to binational aquifer assessment than Mexico. As one interviewee explained, there have been times that TAAP participants on both sides have agreed to the importance of collecting a certain kind of data, but then the Mexican side declines to move forward with the joint study due to lack of funding. In meetings and in formal presentations by Mexican officials, the budget cuts to participating agencies and lack of personnel and equipment have at times been acknowledged as an obstacle to participation. Other times, more subtle actions, such as delaying studies, or giving “maybe in the future” responses to requests for collaboration may also stem from the gap in resourced-based power. The TAAP Cooperative Framework does include the following stipulation: “Either country may contribute to costs for work done in the other country” [20]. This rule is intended to compensate for the unequal resources. As discussed above, however, the U.S. control over funding for research completed by Mexico has previously been experienced as coercive. Therefore, the practice of sharing funds meant to equalize participation on each side of the border does not mitigate the gap in resourced-based power in TAAP collaborations.

The Framework for Assessing Power in Collaborative Governance Processes juxtaposes the three arenas of power with three sources of power—participants (who is involved and who leads), content (what issues are addressed), and process design (the where, when, and how of collaborative interaction) [13]. The TAAP Cooperative Framework is largely successful in managing power asymmetries in these three sources. TAAP brings together participants from agencies and scholars on both sides of the border with roughly equivalent standing. Representatives from each side have the power to move the collaboration forward or to delay and/or end particular collaborative efforts. In terms of content, representatives from each country have the ability to propose a priority aquifer, but the other side must agree to move the collaboration forward. Both countries must agree on the topic and scope of work of joint research.

In formal TAAP meetings, unequal relationships of power are mitigated through process design. In-person meetings are held on both sides of the border as to not privilege one site over the other. Each side speaks the language of their own country, regardless of language ability, and simultaneous translation is provided in both languages so that neither Spanish or English is privileged over the other. Formal meetings are arranged and hosted by IBWC/CILA. Meeting organizers balance the agenda between each side, and agendas are distributed in both languages prior to the meeting. The representatives from the U.S. are seated together and at the opposite side of the table from the Mexican representatives. The strict rules of engagement create a “ritualized” meeting space, with a high degree of “formalization” [21]. Formalization is characterized by restricted codes of behavior, rigid schedule of events, and invariance to form, and is often a way of clarifying social hierarchies [21]. In the case of formal TAAP meeting, the formalization serves to symbolically confer equal standing to participants from each side. The rules of engagement for TAAP meetings therefore help to moderate the effects of unequal relationships of power.

When relationships of power are managed, trust is more easily established. Examining the TAAP program with the Framework for Assessing Power in Collaborative Governance Processes is a useful exercise to illuminate the strengths and weaknesses in the TAAP program at mitigating unequal relationships of power and establishing trust. In the analysis above, resource-based power is shown to be the most significant and persistent source of power inequality. However, the Framework was not necessarily intended to examine international attempts at collaborative governance processes and therefore falls short of illuminating important power relationships and corresponding barriers to trust in the TAAP program. Referencing again Wolf’s four modalities of power, the Framework provides tools to assess (1) personal power, (2) interpersonal power, and (3) the context in which power is exercised, but is does not address (4) structural power. Below, I examine the importance of structural power in shaping the context of relationships of power in the TAAP program.

3.3. Risk, Power, and Sovereignty

The gap in structural power between the United States and Mexico is particularly important to consider in the TAAP program, an endeavor that engages with two important ways that modern nation-states assert sovereignty: control over borderlands, and control of natural resources. Border scholars show that demonstrating control of national borders, particularly through militarization and policing, have become essential ways of asserting sovereignty in an era of globalization [22,23,24,25,26,27]. Likewise, control over and efficient use of natural resources is a central component of nation-states’ claims of political legitimacy, modernity, and sovereignty [28,29]. Demonstrating appropriate control over natural resources in the U.S./Mexico borderlands is therefore deeply tied to structural power due to its symbolic significance in regard to assertions of sovereignty by each country.

Assertions of sovereignty at the border are material as well as symbolic [25], and the importance of the gap in structural power between the U.S. and Mexico is also both material and symbolic. Collaboration across structural power imbalance results in different levels of symbolic and material risk between sovereign nations with significantly different levels of political, economic, and military power. To understand the level of risk that each side faces, it is important to contextualize the relationships between the United States and Mexico in the history of exercises of power between the two nations. The last military conflict between the U.S. and Mexico, the Mexican–American War, ended in 1848 with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe in which Mexico ceded more than half its territory to the U.S. To understand the historical significance of this to the TAAP program, it is important to consider that each of the Water Resources Research Institutes of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas are all located on land ceded to the U.S. by Mexico through military intervention. While this event occurred more than a century and a half ago, historical legacies haunt the present and expectations about the future. The United States military remains dramatically more powerful than that of Mexico. If the exchange of data about shared groundwater resources resulted in conflict over the resources, Mexico would be at a distinct disadvantage to defend its rights to water. Therefore, Mexico is taking a greater risk in collaborating than the United States, causing an asymmetrical relationship of power that hinders the development of trust.

There is also the perceived risk of losing control over groundwater resources through litigation. For the TAAP participants that I spoke to about risk, legal battles over shared groundwater resources were a more pressing concern than military conflict. One interviewee explained that U.S.-based domestic lawsuits have disrupted TAAP collaborations in the past, as Mexico does not want to be drawn into a legal battle over water rights. Instead, the interviewee explained, Mexico prefers to step back and wait for the U.S. lawsuit to be resolved before continuing binational work. Litigation between U.S. states therefore increases perceived risk of participation in TAAP and decreases trust in the process.

The TAAP Cooperative Framework includes provisions to limit the risk of participation by explicitly prohibiting TAAP data from being used to intervene in the water management practices of either sovereign nation. In the section titled “Principles of the Agreement”, the last three of the six principles are aimed at this task, stating:

• No provision set forth in this agreement will limit what either country can do independently in its own territory.
• No part of this agreement may contravene what has been stipulated in the Boundary and Water Treaties between the two countries.
• The information generated from these projects is solely for the purpose of expanding knowledge of the aquifers and should not be used by one country to require that the other country modify its water management and use [20].

The language of the agreement strongly imposes limits to what the data produced and shared through the TAAP program can be used for. Yet, data and research results, once made public, can be taken up in unexpected and undesirable ways, regardless of the intentions of the scientists involved. There will always be a degree of risk in producing and sharing data about shared resources, leading to the question: If risk is inherent in the TAAP data exchange, why trust at all?

TAAP participants choose to trust one another and the collaborative process as the risk of not exchanging knowledge about shared groundwater resources seems even greater. Along the U.S./Mexico border, urban centers, rural communities, industrial and agricultural economies, and ecosystems rely on groundwater resources. Border communities are looking to prolong the life of the aquifers they depend on. However, how can that be accomplished with incomplete knowledge of basic facts about shared aquifers? How many aquifers are shared across the U.S./Mexico border? What is the capacity of each aquifer? How far into each country does a particular aquifer extend? How much water is being extracted from each side? What factors are affecting the quality of the shared groundwater? The sharing of data that addresses these questions is essential to understanding the future of the binational aquifers and the futures of the communities that depend on them. Therefore, extending trust and engaging in collaborative binational groundwater assessments are worth the risk to participants.

There is also the hope amongst many participants that successful collaborative assessment of binational aquifers will eventually lead to successful cooperative management of the shared resources. As one interviewee said:

It really begins with us. If we can demonstrate that we can collect this information, and do it where it’s equal and transparent, that’s going to hopefully help the next effort, where they do start having discussions on how the resources are managed. People are afraid to take that step because they fear of losing control of their resource. But we’re hoping that at some point, they’ll think, we’re more afraid that we’re not going to have a resource if we don’t talk about it…So, I’m hopeful that our work is laying the groundwork for those future discussions.

The risk involved in the collaborative assessment of binational groundwater is magnified in attempts at collaborative governance. The asymmetry of power between the U.S. and Mexico makes Mexico particularly hesitant to engage in negotiations over water [30]. The hope is that the framework for mitigating unequal relationships of power put into practice in the TAAP program, as well as the years of successful binational collaboration and relationship building that has flourished under TAAP, will result in sufficient trust that collaborative binational resource management may become possible.

4. Discussion

In public presentations, official meetings, informal discussions, scholarly publications, and interviews, trust is identified as essential to the success of the TAAP program. There are specific behaviors and occurrences that contribute to trust, and others that detract from trust, as shown above. Yet, the question of why trust is so important is not often discussed. Considering the nexus of power, trust, and risk [11], trust is important due to what is at risk—loss of control by a sovereign nation of shared groundwater resources. The level of risk is high due to the unequal relationship of power that characterizes the United States and Mexico. The TAAP Cooperative Agreement and rules of engagement for formal TAAP meetings help to mitigate the unequal power relationship, but important asymmetries remain.

Consider the factors that contributed to trust listed in Table 1—ethnographic and interview data support that factors such as long-term engagement, relationship building, and face-to-face interactions are important to establishing trust in the TAAP program. However, the data also show that adherence to the listed factors does not always result in trust. I have witnessed TAAP participants who know each other well, have worked together for many years, who respect TAAP processes, and who communicate well about goals and boundaries, demonstrate resistance to further collaboration in the form of delaying action or refusing to commit to a project. Using my working definition of trust, an unwillingness to proceed in collaboration demonstrates a lack of trust. I argue that this is because, considering trust in relationship to risk and power, these factors only address differences in power at the first, second, and third levels of power identified by Wolf as described in the introduction. They do not diminish risk based on unequal relationships of power at the fourth, structural level of power. That same limitation is found in the factors identified in the Framework for Assessing Power in Collaborative Governance Processes. The TAAP Cooperative Framework does well to manage power inequalities at personal and interpersonal levels, and in the context of organizing and managing the exchange, but it cannot mitigate differences in structural power.

I argue that the gap in structural power is more of a hinderance at times of increased risk to a nation-state’s ability to maintain sovereign control over its borderland water resources, such as a domestic lawsuit over water in the U.S. While work on other shared aquifers along the U.S./Mexico border continues to progress, work on the Mesilla Bolson/Conejos Medanos and the Hueco Bolson at the Texas/New Mexico/Chihuahua border has slowed and experienced setbacks in the last decade. Ethnographically, this was visible at the conclusion of a virtual Mesilla/Hueco TAAP meeting in 2021 when it came time to discuss next steps. A U.S. representative asked Mexico to commit to a consistent meeting time at agreed upon intervals throughout the year as a way to ensure the collaboration moved forward. A Mexican representative rejected the proposal. The U.S. representative then asked to set a date just for the next meeting. Again, the Mexican representative refused, stating that they needed to take time to review the data that the U.S. provided in the most recent exchange before committing to any further meetings. Earlier in the meeting, discussions of further collaborations beyond data exchanges were tabled by Mexico as contingent upon a successful data exchange.

Discussion by U.S.-based collaborators in regard to these slowdowns often center around trust at an interpersonal level—participants wondering what more they can do to earn the trust of the other side in order to continue. However, I interpret the refusal to progress in collaboration not as a lack of interpersonal trust, but as a reaction to increased risk of collaboration brought about by the still unresolved lawsuit over water resources brought to the Supreme Court in 2013 by the state of Texas against New Mexico. This increased risk highlights the unequal relationship of power between the two countries. In the context of this unequal relationship of power, Mexico’s practice of delaying progress, tabling ideas, and rejection of establishing a set meeting schedule can all be understood as forms of negation as described by James Scott—ways for the less powerful party to assert agency without directly confronting the source of power [31]. Insistence on establishing relationships of trust before proceeding further is another way of “pumping the breaks” or slowing down the collaborative process. It can be frustrating for participants who are ready to progress with their scholarship, and for parties hoping to meet funding timelines and produce deliverables. However, using trust as a tactic to slow down, especially when used by the underpowered party, should be understood as an important tool for navigating very real risk and a form of asserting power in an asymmetrical context. The emphasis on trust makes sense when contextualized in the power, trust, and risk nexus.

When I asked participants if issues of power were ever discussed openly between TAAP participants from the U.S. and Mexico, no one could recall such an instance. In my ethnographic fieldwork, I did not observe frank conversations about power. Instead, trust is the acceptable language with which to address issues that I argue are rooted in power. The lack of frank conversations about power indicates that important asymmetrical power relationships between participants remain, despite efforts mediate such differences.

In this research, representatives of government agencies were more able to identify the structural risks of TAAP than were participating scholars, who tended to emphasize interpersonal trust. However, all participants should be encouraged to think critically about trust, risk, and power when engaging in binational collaborations. This is especially true in times of heightened risk, such as ongoing litigation over water resources. If refusals to move forward can be attributed to heightened risk for the Mexican collaborators, both sides may need to adjust in the short-term to keep the long-term goals of the program intact. For example, if both sides could agree to name another priority aquifer (or set of aquifers) that presents less risk, collaboration could continue while tabling stalled efforts on temporarily contentious aquifers. This would require addressing the gap in structural power head-on and working together to find suitable workarounds.

In this article, I use the working defined trust in TAAP collaborations as the willingness to proceed with collaboration despite risks. This definition is useful for analyzing trust in practice in TAAP collaborations; it is also useful for conceptualizing what trust is. Similar to Grimen [11], I analyze trust in relationship to risk and power, but it is important in this context to consider how manifestations of power are scaled hierarchically ask described by Wolf [12]. Trust is a social relationship, but it is not only an aspect of interpersonal relationships. Risk related to structural relationships of power is an essential component to understanding trust and its social function. This is particularly true when considering asymmetrical binational collaborations.

One interviewee stated, “it’s critical that you establish trust and it doesn’t matter how long it takes, it’ll benefit whatever you’re doing. I think that’s been one of the most valuable lessons that I learned participating in the TAAP.” Establishing trust in a context of unequal risk and power requires intentionality, commitment, patience, and a major investment of time. The binational relationships established, and scholarship collaboratively produced, through the TAAP program are therefore a commendable feat. Yet, the TAAP program would benefit from critical discussions of power and risk, particularly in reference to the gap in structural power between the U.S. and Mexico. Such conversations are particularly necessary when progress is stalled, revealing a lack of trust. Once underlying issues of power and risk are identified, creative and workable solutions could be identified to keep the important work of the TAAP program going.