Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The water management crisis in Mexico, driven by severe drought and the overexploitation of transboundary river basins, underscores the shortcomings of an anthropocentric legal framework that treats water solely as a public resource. This article examines the legal and policy foundations for recognizing rivers as rights-bearing entities in Mexico, advocating for a water governance model aligned with climate justice, the rights of nature, and Indigenous community governance. Employing a qualitative approach, the study combines a legal-documentary analysis of federal legislation with a comparative case study of the Rio Grande/Bravo and Colorado River basins, drawing on jurisprudence and precedents of river personhood in Ecuador, Colombia, and New Zealand. The findings indicate that the lack of legal personality for rivers impedes their comprehensive protection, exacerbates social vulnerability, and violates the human rights of Indigenous and rural communities. The article argues that reforming the General Water Law to establish river guardianship, mandate binding ecological flows, and create specialized water tribunals is both feasible and urgently necessary. Such reforms would advance pluralistic water governance, prioritizing the regeneration of life cycles over extractivist logic.
Author: Zaire Vázquez Orduña
Institution: Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero
Language: English
Topic: Environmental law and policy
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7168535851