With the recent flurry of news about the “great, great” wall that President Trump hopes to build along the U.S.-Mexico border, not much has been said about the interconnectedness — in fact, indivisibility — of the natural resources that the U.S. and Mexico share along their Pacific coastlines.
Think, for example, of the Colorado which flows through the lower half of the western U.S. before reaching the U.S.-Mexico border and on to Mexico’s Gulf of California. Think too about the gray whale migration from their nursing grounds in the warm waters of Baja California peninsula and their summer feeding grounds in the cold Arctic Sea of Alaska. Think finally of the Pacific Flyway – a major north-south route for migratory birds along the Pacific coastal waters that extends from Alaska to Patagonia, via Baja California, the Mexican peninsula separating the Pacific Ocean from the Gulf of California.
Nature reminds us that its protection calls for bridges not walls. As does the well being we humans derive from clean air and clean water. That is part of what Mr. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President of Waterkeeper Alliance, hopes to convey to clean water supporters today at an event in Santa Monica, CA. Waterkeeper Alliance strengthens and grows a global network of grassroots leaders protecting everyone’s right to clean water and is the largest and fastest growing nonprofit solely focused on clean water. The event, to be hosted by the International Community Foundation and Environment Now in partnership with California Coastkeeper Alliance and Waterkeeper Alliance, will be the launch of a fund to benefit Baja Waterkeepers and make sure that their hard work safeguarding Baja’s coastal waters not only continues but also grows. U.S.-based foundations and individual donors will have a chance to hear firsthand from the Mexican Waterkeepers themselves.
There are 10 Waterkeeper organizations scattered along Baja’s 2,038 miles of coastline, starting a stone’s throw away from the U.S.-Mexico border in Tijuana, down along the Baja’s coastline to its southernmost tip in Cabo San Lucas, and then back up along the Gulf of California to the Colorado River Delta. They are a diverse and talented group of biologists, architects, lawyers, fishermen, concerned citizens, and activists.
Their projects –ranging from water quality monitoring to ongoing beach cleanups to environmental education– seek to empower Mexican communities facing the same threats – pollution from industrial operations, coastal habitat destruction and erosion, and unregulated development – that also impact communities in the United States. In particular, their 13 California Waterkeeper neighbors to the north work on many of the same issues facing the California coastline: trash pollution and polluted coastal waters, destructive coastal development and rising sea levels.
For the Baja and California Waterkeepers it’s clear that to effectively address those threats, they need, more than ever, collaborators on both sides of the border. With the onslaught of anti-environmental proposals from President Trump, many U.S. funders are considering downscaling international work to refocus on environmental protection in the U.S. The U.S. foundations and donors that will hear Mr. Kennedy speak today are to be commended for wanting to collaborate, to build bridges instead of walls, and for recognizing the indivisibility of the U.S. and Mexico’s shared natural resources. Clean water for everyone means clean water for Americans and Mexicans alike. Collaboration knows no national boundaries.