Full Description
The Law of International Watercourses examines the rules of international law governing the navigational and non-navigational uses of international watercourses. The continued growth of the world's population places increasing demands on Earth's finite supplies of fresh water. Because two or more States share many of the world's most important drainage basins - including the Danube, the Ganges, the Indus, the Jordan, the Mekong, the Nile, the Rhine and theTigris-Euphrates - competition for increasingly scarce fresh water resources is likely to increase. Agreements between the states sharing international watercourses will be negotiated, and disputes over shared water will be resolved, against the backdrop of the rules of international law governing the useof this precious resource. The basic legal rules governing the use of shared freshwater for purposes other than navigation are reflected in the 1997 UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses. This book devotes a chapter to the 1997 Convention but also examines the factual and legal context in which the Convention should be understood, considers the more important rules of the Convention in some depth and discusses specific issues that could not be addressed in a frameworkinstrument of that kind. The book reviews the major cases and controversies concerning international watercourses as a background against which to consider the basic substantive and procedural rights and obligations of states in the field.The present second edition adds a chapter on the law of navigation on international waterways. The chapter considers the historical development of the law of freedom of navigation, reviews the major cases in the field and draws conclusions regarding the present state of the law.This edition also updates the entire book, adds new material to many of the chapters and adds a number of new case studies to the chapter devoted to those.
Contents
PART I. INTRODUCTION ; 1. Human Use of Fresh Water and the Coming Era of Water Scarcity ; 2. The Concept of the International Watercourse System ; Theoretical Bases of International Watercourse Law: Introductory Considerations ; 4. International Watercourses as Exclusively National Resources: The "Harmon Doctrine" in United States Practice ; 5. Theoretical Bases of International Watercourse Law: An Examination of the Four Principal Theories ; 6. The Contribution of the Law of Navigation ; PART III. THE MAJOR CASES AND CONTROVERSIES ; 7. The Major Cases ; 8. Selected Case Studies ; PART IV. FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS ; 9. Introduction: The 1997 United Nations Convention ; A. SUBSTANTIVE OBLIGATIONS ; 10. The Obligation to Utilize An International Watercourse in an Equitable and Reasonable Manner ; 11. The Obligation to Prevent Harm to Other Riparian States ; 12. The Obligation to Protect International Watercourses and Their Ecosystems ; B. PROCEDURAL OBLIGATIONS ; 13. Procedural Obligations ; C. GROUNDWATER ; 14. The Special Case of Groundwater ; D. DISPUTE AVOIDANCE AND SETTLEMENT ; 15. Dispute Avoidance and Settlement: Selected Aspects ; ANNEXES ; I. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses (1997) with Statements of Understanding regarding certain provisions of the UN Convention ; II. Helsinki Rules on the Uses of the Waters of International Rivers (1966) ; III. International Law Commission, Resolution on Confined Transboundary Groundwater
