Description
Legal mechanisms for the management, development and protection of water resources have evolved over the years and have reached unprecedented levels of complexity and sophistication. This phenomenon is largely in response to the global community’s sustainable development agenda, to the challenges and limitations imposed by climate variability, and to scientific and technological advances. Bringing together diverse experiences from across the world, this book analyses existing water law and governance solutions, their shortcomings, as well as developments and trends in the light of changing circumstances. The legal mechanisms examined range from international treaties, agreements and arrangements on cooperation over transboundary water resources, to the onset of novel issues arising out of technological advances, and from domestic regulation of water abstraction and groundwater management, to domestic regulation of the water industry. The articles in this book were originally published in the journal Water International, following the XIV and the XV World Water Congresses of the International Water Resources Association (IWRA), which were held in 2011 and in 2015, respectively.
The chapters originally published in Water International.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
Marcella Nanni, Stefano Burchi, Ariella D’Andrea, Gabriel Eckstein
PART 1: Water law developments and trends in a changing world
2 A comparative review of contemporary water resources legislation: trends, developments and an agenda for reform
Stefano Burchi
3 Legislation as a tool in support of adaptive water management in response to climate change
Marcella Nanni
PART 2: Challenges to Water Security: Equity, legal pluralism, and climatic variability
4 Water governance reform in the context of inequality: securing rights or legitimizing dispossession?
Helle Munk Ravnborg
5 Compulsory licensing under South Africa’s National Water Act
Michael Kidd
6 Legal pluralism and customary water resources management in Guatemala
Ariella D’Andrea
7 Why the Western United States’ prior appropriation water rights system should weather climate variability
Jonathan R. Schutz
8 Adapting water laws to increasing demand and a changing climate
Eric L. Garner
PART 3: Multiple approaches for achieving access to water
9 The human right to water as a creature of global administrative law
Owen McIntyre
10 The right to water in a transboundary context: emergence of seminal trends
Christina Leb
11 Scottish Water: a public-sector success story
Sarah Hendry
PART 4: Science and the Law: bridging the gap
12 Are we killing the rain? Meditations on the water cycle and, more particularly, on bioprecipitation
Jane Maslow Cohen
13 Governing water augmentation under the Watercourse Convention
Rhett B. Larson
PART 5: Cooperation on Transboundary water resources: current state and future directions
14 Joint infrastructure and the sharing of benefits in the Senegal and Niger watersheds
Mara Tignino
15 Ad hoc legal mechanisms governing transboundary aquifers: current status and future prospects
Laura Movilla Pateiro
16 Adaptation in the Tisza: innovation and tribulation at the sub-basin level
Shanna N. McClain, Carl Bruch and Silvia Secchi
