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Q&A: How do we advance equity in water resource management?
Updated: 6 minutes ago
Environmental economist and water rights expert Rabia Ahmed talks about making communities the starting point for water decisions
Rabia Ahmed wants communities to be the starting point for water-related decisions. Her work in water rights, socioeconomic analysis, and community engagement informs decisions about water resources and infrastructure.
Rabia is a principal economist and managing partner at Greene Economics, and past president and board member of the American Water Resources Association (AWRA), at the both national level and its Washington State Section. She specializes in water rights valuation, water markets, water supply security, and socioeconomic and environmental justice analysis. Her work for tribal governments, public agencies, and private companies ranges from tribal water settlements and statewide infrastructure investment to dam removal and levee breaches.
She belives water is a universal right. In this interview, Rabia discusses equity in water resource management and why every project has an equity element.
What led you to focus on equity in your career?
After I graduated in Pakistan, I didn’t want to work in a bank or academia. I went into international development instead to serve the most vulnerable communities. I worked with local NGOs and then a large international organization on issues such as microfinance schemes for women, labor rights, human trafficking, and sexual harassment policy.
I also got involved in rural water supply schemes that emphasized water as a basic human right. I saw women carrying water for miles. I saw firsthand how even a few taps or a village well could transform life in those communities.
When I moved to the U.S. and earned a second master's degree, I met Gretchen Greene. Once she saw my interest in working with communities, she brought me into her team’s work with Native American tribes. I realized there’s more to economics: you can actually help vulnerable people.
At Greene Economics, the firm we established, we look at every project through a social equity lens. Even when a client doesn’t ask for it, we suggest adding an equity element because we’re already thinking about it.
Much of your early work was with tribal nations on water rights settlements.
One of my first big projects was with the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona. They already had a significant water rights settlement when they hired us. People called them the “tsars of water” in Arizona. They asked, “Can you help us figure out what to do with this water? Everyone wants it, but we definitely don’t want to sell it.” We explored options, including agriculture, irrigation, leases, and other ways to benefit the community while aligning with their strong Indigenous values.
We’ve also done a lot of work with the Navajo and Hopi on their water rights settlements.
What does equity in water resource management mean in practice?
Everyone deserves safe, clean water, and enough of it.
In developing countries, it’s a different playing field. The barrier isn’t cost. It’s physical access—walking for miles to get your water—and most of that burden falls on women and girls. So, it’s a gender equity issue.
Over here, equity is more about cost and access to clean water. If there’s PFAS in your municipal water supply, can you afford PFAS-free bottled water? Do you even know about the contamination? A lot of people don’t. That’s a right-to-information issue.
And not everybody can afford to pay more for water. As water supplies become more limited, vulnerable communities will become more water insecure.
How can economic analysis support more equitable water decisions?
A big part is identifying where the inequities are. At Greene Economics, we do socioeconomic analysis to find pockets of poverty and inequity, and demographic projections to see where vulnerable populations are growing. For tribal settlements, those projections go out 100 years.
We also do thorough socioeconomic and environmental justice analysis for environmental impact studies. On one project, we identified a huge child poverty issue in the area.
We bring equity analysis into other water projects, too. For a King County levee breach project, for example, another team is doing the broader economic analysis, and we’re doing the equity piece. The study looks at what could happen if a levee fails, including economic and community impacts, and impacts on more vulnerable residents.
I don’t think there’s any project out there without an equity element that should at least be discussed, if not fully analyzed.
How do your ideas about equity relate to your leadership within AWRA?
AWRA felt like a professional home right away. The national level was always diverse, and I felt comfortable there as a person of color. I saw a way to bring more students, women, and people of color into water resources.
I was the first woman of color to serve as national president in the organization’s 60-plus-year history. We’ve broken that glass ceiling. But governance matters too. Our board voted unanimously to designate one of our open board positions for a student. Then we found our bylaws didn’t allow it. It was unconscious, not intentional. Now we’re revising the bylaws to remove barriers to diversity in leadership.
If we’re in positions of authority, it’s up to us to make sure our governing documents don’t create equity barriers.
What are you presenting at the AWRA 202 Annual Water Resources Conference?
I'm presenting “Past Their Prime: Synthesizing Economic Evidence for Removing Aging Dams and Identifying Data Gaps.” It draws on a literature review we did for the Resources Legacy Fund’s Open Rivers Fund on the economic impacts of dams and the benefits of removing obsolete ones.
The research was scattered across journal articles, agency orders, and consultant reports. We brought it together in a searchable database covering everything from maintenance costs to fisheries, recreation, and local economic impacts. We also identified gaps, especially research on small, non-hydroelectric dams and studies tracking what happens after removal. The goal is to help communities, dam owners, and public agencies use the evidence in repair-or-remove decisions and see where more research is needed.
What gets in the way of more equitable water decisions?
Not starting with communities. Midway through a project, someone says, “Now let’s do community outreach.” Seriously, why didn’t you do it from the start so we could design the project around it?
Even when outreach happens, it’s often its own little silo. It needs to be integrated, not treated as a box to be checked. At Greene Economics, when we do outreach, we involve the technical people from the start. We take them to the meetings and include them in our documents. We do it well because we’re also the technical people.
On a statewide water infrastructure study for Washington’s Office of Financial Management, we looked at investment needs for water supply, flood protection, stormwater, and fisheries habitat restoration. We listed existing and planned projects, then held meetings around the state and asked, “What else needs to happen?” Finally, we put a cost on those needs. That number is still being quoted in bills.
What’s next for equity in water resource management?
In Washington, I think we’re on the right track. The policies are there. But access to water differs from place to place, and as freshwater supplies become more limited, those policies become even more important.
Some processes need to catch up. A water right change application can take eight to 10 years. I’m not blaming the state. The process is complex because it protects something bigger than us: the salmon, the flows in our rivers, tribal treaty rights. But climate change isn’t waiting. Somehow, we have to catch up.
We need more integrated planning and a bottom-up approach that starts at the community level. Communities need a seat at the table when decisions are made. At Greene Economics, we use community outreach and policy analysis to bring community voices to policymakers.
Rabia Ahmed is a principal economist and managing partner at Greene Economics. Her work helps communities, tribes, and public agencies understand the economic tradeoffs of water resource, infrastructure, and environmental decisions.
