Since colonial times, Americans have worked through both conflict and cooperation to share the benefits of their land's rivers and their tributaries. The role of the United States government evolved throughout the 20th Century, with various federal agencies responsible for integrating stakeholders' interests to manage water resources for present and future generations. Legal and institutional frameworks evolved at basin-level,national and bi-national scales to address competing riparian uses, maintain
water quantity, quantity and aquatic habitat, and mitigate the potential for a "tragedy of the commons." As demonstrated in the vicinity of the nation's capital, both regulatory and voluntary approaches resulted in notable successes. Still neither approach in of itself has fully delivered on proponents' expectations for achieving long-term goals like "fishable/swimmable" rivers or restoration of fisheries of the nation's largest estuary, the Chesapeake Bay.At the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, pressures from demographics, development and climate varability further limit the effectiveness of isolated voluntary or command and control approaches.
Instead, decision-makers around Washington, DC, are promoting integration of regulatory and voluntary regimes, conscious of long-term ideals, but also
pragmatic and adaptive to near-term benchmarks. River basin managers no longer simply integrate the interests of watershed stakeholders. They increasingly integrate broad participation in actual IRBM implementation, from the President of the United States to the primary school student. Opportunities for collaboration or comparative research with Chinese colleagues on issues related to climate variability and adaptive estuarine management will also be explored.
At George Mason University, Dann Sklarew, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Policy and Associate Director of the Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center. For over 16 years, Dr.Sklarew has researched and provided technical assistance to freshwater and coastal management initiatives at provincial, national and transnational scales.Since the 1990s, his domestic focus has been the United States' largest estuary,the Chesapeake Bay, and its second largest tributary, the Potomac River.Since both basins include Washington, DC, this region provides a unique opportunity to simultaneously examine American transjurisdictional watershed management at local, regional and national levels. American partners have included US EPA, NOAA, NASA, the District of Columbia,
and the States of Alaska, Maryland, Texas and Virginia. Dr. Sklarew also served 8 years as director of a United Nations/Global Environment Facility project, IW:LEARN, which partners with over 20 nations, international agencies and NGOs to assist transboundary waters projects around the world.Beneficiaries include the Tumen River, the Yellow Sea and the South China Sea. This work also brought him to China on two occasions, first for his project's second "GEF International Waters Conference" (Dalian, 2002) then for the Second Intergovernmental Review of the GPA for Land-based Sources of Marine Pollution (Beijing, 2006). More recently, he now serves as a Virginia Governor-appointed representative to the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB) and an academic member of the
Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG) Climate,Energy and Environmental Policy Committee. Dr. Sklarew studies the effects of climate variability -- temperature, precipitation and hydrology -- on ecosystem services of the estuarine Potomac and Chesapeake watersheds, for which he welcomes opportunities for international collaboration and comparative climate adaptation research with Chinese colleagues.