Water governance in the Rio del Carmen watershed has failed to achieve sustainable water use, generating social conflicts, water overexploitation, and grassland loss. This leaves it unable to adapt and learn, to reconcile different stakeholder perspectives and to adequately respond to uncertainty. Adaptive water governance regulates water access through flexible, inclusive and innovative institutions, increasing system adaptive capacity in the face of uncertainty. This is necessary for water-scarce systems since they suffer context-specific exposure to land degradation and climate change. This research focuses on how water governance regulates water access in the Rio del Carmen watershed, Mexico, identifying key legal and institutional features that could increase adaptation and secure water resources in the long-term. 27 semi-structured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders in the watershed, in order to understand the water governance structure and its system dynamics. It was found that water mismanagement, overexploitation, and conflicts over access to water are due to the lack of application and neglect of formal rules. Results indicate that breaches of the legal framework are commonplace, permitted by corruption of both former and current government officials. Many farmers have institutionalized this corruption in order to access water; increasing social conflicts and hindering any type of planning or water management, which, in turn, continues to affect the ecological conditions of the watershed. By understanding the governance system, its structure and the interactions that weaken and bypass formal institutions to the detriment of water resources, stakeholder engagement has emerged as an entry point for enabling collaboration and acceptance of formal institutions. This process has the potential to create a formal network, as a Watershed Committee, that could be honoured in practice through the efficacy of this engagement.

• Groundwater overexploitation in Mexico significantly increases arsenic contamination, posing severe public health risks. • Bangladesh's arsenic health crisis shows what problem-shifting looks like, underscoring the need for integrated water sustainability strategies. • Policy reforms must be implemented to address the consequences of water access initiatives on groundwater quality in Mexico and prevent further problem-shifting.

Drylands are exposed to climate stressors, such as water scarcity, as well as societal stressors, including conflicts, which can make water governance unsuitable for the system’s context. The emergence of adaptive water governance often takes places in these challenging contexts, but the process of achieving this style of governance requires a better consideration of system complexities. Using the Rio del Carmen watershed in Mexico as a case study, with primary data obtained through a questionnaire survey carried out with 217 farmers, this paper aims to identify the main complexities and needs to enable the emergence of adaptive water governance. We found that different groups of farmers converge in identifying system stressors and the main needs regarding water governance; yet, the ways these stressors are perceived differ between groups. The results indicate that contrasting perceptions are shaped by the different cultural roots and environmental conditions in the upper and lower parts of the watershed. This variation increases the difficulty in achieving collaboration and compromise when conflicts ensue. Reducing inequalities in the awareness of system stressors has the potential to enable adaptive water governance. This could be achieved through a peacebuilding technique with an appropriate cultural approach for the watershed’s context in the early stages of a stakeholder engagement process.

Freshwater scarcity can weaken water governance when hydrological pressure interacts with intensive agricultural demand, regulatory weakness, and political conflict. This research evaluates whether Irrigation District 005 (IR 005) in Chihuahua, northern Mexico, demonstrates local water-governance fragility across three domains: public security, the rule of law, and the ability to sustain water access and food production. A mixed-methods approach integrates legal and human rights documentation, institutional records, published studies, and a structured media review with hydrological, agricultural, climatic, and reservoir data. Water balances were analysed for 1998–2023, precipitation trends for 1980–2020, and crop water requirements were estimated using the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Irrigation and Drainage Paper No. 56 (FAO-56) Penman–Monteith framework, the crop coefficient (Kc), the water-stress coefficient (Ks), the United States Soil Conservation Service (SCS) Curve Number method, and application-efficiency assumptions. The 2020 water conflict resulted in fatalities, injuries, arrests, and documented human rights violations. Rule-of-law capacity was further diminished by unauthorised withdrawals, cultivation beyond authorised irrigation plans, and limited enforcement. The annual water balance shifted to persistent deficits after 2016, reaching an estimated deficit of 2268 cubic hectometres (hm³) in 2020. Annual precipitation did not exhibit a statistically significant monotonic decline during 1980–2020 (Mann–Kendall Z = −0.79, τ = −0.0878, p = 0.4251; Sen’s slope = −1.1628 mm yr⁻¹; Mann–Whitney p = 0.5313), indicating that recent stress is more closely linked to production scale, crop mix, governance conditions, and irrigation efficiency than to a long-term reduction in rainfall. Sensitivity analysis revealed that ±15% changes in Kc and Ks altered gross water requirements by approximately ±16–17%, while equivalent changes in effective precipitation produced changes of only 1–3%. These results demonstrate heightened water-governance fragility resulting from mutually reinforcing hydrological, institutional, and conflict-related pressures. Future research should refine locally calibrated water-demand parameters and develop reproducible monitoring systems that combine hydrological, institutional, satellite, and participatory data to support anticipatory, transparent, and rights-based water governance.

La ciencia del sistema Tierra ha demostrado que las condiciones que permiten la vida en la Tierra dependen de su sistema interconectado, complejo y adaptativo, compuesto por procesos naturales, ciclos biogeoquímicos y flujos de energía. Aunque el futuro de la Tierra depende de mantener este sistema en un estado funcional y estable, hasta la fecha, el Derecho no logra protegerlo eficazmente. Recientemente se ha propuesto el derecho del sistema Tierra como un nuevo paradigma jurídico capaz de abarcar la complejidad y no linealidades subyacentes al funcionamiento del sistema Tierra. Al explorar los aspectos normativos del sistema Tierra, este documento propone un marco conceptual que integra tres aspectos para fortalecer el papel de la ley en la protección de dicho sistema: adaptación, regulación de sistemas y justicia planetaria. En última instancia, este artículo discute las implicaciones para el derecho del sistema Tierra de integrar la adaptación, la regulación de sistemas y la justicia planetaria y proteger las condiciones planetarias que sostienen todas las formas de vida. Earth system science has shown that the Earth’s life-enabling conditions rely on its interconnected, complex, adaptive system composed of natural processes, biogeochemical cycles, and energy fluxes. Although Earth’s future depends on maintaining this system in a well-functioning and stable state, to date, the law fails to effectively protect it. Earth system law has recently been proposed as a new legal paradigm able to embrace the complexity and non-linearity underlying the Earth system functioning. In exploring the normative aspects of the Earth system this paper proposes a conceptual framework that integrates three aspects for strengthening the law’s role in protecting the Earth system: adaptiveness, systems regulation, and planetary justice. Ultimately, this paper discusses the implications for Earth system law to integrate adaptiveness, systems regulation, and planetary justice and protect the planetary conditions that sustain all life forms.