Reforming Water Law And Governance

This book identifies the most effective water policy tools and innovations, and the circumstances that foster their successful implementation by taking a comparative look at a world-leading ‘laboratory’ of water law and governance: Australia. In particular, the book analyses Australia’s 20-year experience implementing a hybrid governance system of markets, hierarchical regulation, and collaborative integrated water planning. Australia is acknowledged as a world leader in water governance reform, and an examination of its relatively mature water law and governance system has great significance for many international academics and jurisdictions. This book synthesises practical lessons and theoretical insights from Australia, as well as recommendations from comparative analysis with countries such as the United States to provide useful guidance for policymakers and scholars seeking to apply water instruments in a wide range of policy contexts. The book also advances our understanding of water and broader environmental governance theory and is a valuable reference for scholars, researchers and students working in law, regulation and governance studies – especially in the field of water and environmental law. Chapter “Lessons from Australian water reforms: Indigenous and environmental values in market-based water regulation” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book provides a first comprehensive legal examination of water rights arrangements and water rights trading in China. Although recent water reform in China has made substantial progress in policy development and practice, how its legal and institutional framework facilitates or hinders the application of tradable water rights remains less addressed in the existing scholarship. Against the backdrop of China’s water reform and the wider international debate in water governance, this book aims to provide an innovative approach to the complex issue of water governance by critically analysing the recent legal and policy developments in China towards tradable water rights. It examines the deficiencies of the current systems for water rights arrangements and trading, explores how China may learn from and build on the international trends in water rights trading practice (mainly Australia and the US), and proposes legal and policy frameworks for defining and administering tradable water rights in China that underpin sustainable water use in the face of exacerbated water scarcity, variability, and uncertainty. All in all, the book proposes pragmatic strategies for China’s water law and policy reform to move towards tradable water rights, which encompasses a comprehensive prescription from initialising and defining tradable water rights to administering water rights and trading. By reflecting on the deepening water reforms in both China and other jurisdictions, the book aims to contribute to the international water governance debate by exploring from a legal and policy perspective, how China, comparative to other cases around the world, can find a balanced combination of water allocation mechanisms to address its water challenges. It is hoped that the observations and proposed implications for China’s water reform will contribute to developing a better understanding of the way in which experiences in water markets can be shared from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Effective water governance capacity is the foundation of efficient management of water resources. Water governance reform processes must work towards building capacity in a cohesive and articulated approach that links national policies, laws and institutions, within an enabling environment that allows for their implementation. This guide shows how national water reform processes can deliver good water governance, by focussing on the principles and practice of reform. RULE guides managers and decision makers on a journey which provides an overview of what makes good law, policy and institutions, and the steps needed to build a coherent and fully operational water governance structure.

According to a famous Talmudic story (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shabbat: 31a), a gentile once approached Rabbi Hillel and asked to be taught the entire Torah while standing on one foot. Hillel replied, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself. That is the entire Torah. The rest is simply an explanation. Go and learn it!’ In much the same way, Jewish law can be described in one word—Torah. All the rest is simply an explanation. The Torah, also known as the Bible, the five books of Moses, and the Pentateuch, was written over 3,000 years ago. Since then, Jewish law has developed various interpretations and applications of the Torah, interpretations of those interpre- tions, and so on. Jewish law contains civil dictates as well as religious protocol. Problems that arose in the framework of religious life and problems surrounding civil relationships both found solutions in the same legal source—the Torah and the Halacha, the Jewish legal interpretations and rulings. This chapter on water law in the Jewish tradition provides insight into Jewish law and custom in general, and rules related to the protection of water sources in particular. One should not look, however, to find a written code of Jewish law, as there is none.

The science–policy interface is critical to the design and implementation of water policies. In theory, scientists provide policy makers with robust facts and data that can help guide decision making, and lessons from the political economy of reforms can push scientific boundaries further to trigger further research for wise solutions. While evidence-based policy is obviously desirable, in practice such a connection is not always straightforward. Another assumption behind the science–policy gap is the discrepancy between scientists and policy makers in terms of culture, process, timing, language and expected outcome. This book tries to reconcile this discrepancy through a multi-stakeholder approach to authoring its different articles. This joint initiative between the OECD – particularly its Water Governance Initiative – and the International Water Resources Association seeks to provide a canvas for grounding water policy in science, and vice versa. The objective of this book, devoted to the OECD Principles on Water Governance, is to use the OECD Principles as a common thread across the articles to draw lessons from theoretical work and practical experiences in water governance reforms; but also to only feature papers authored by groups of diverse stakeholders from different institutional backgrounds. This book was originally published as a special issue of Water International.

Governance of global water resources presents one of the most confounding challenges in contemporary natural resource governance. With considerable government, citizen and financial donor attention devoted to a range of international, transnational and domestic laws and policies aimed at protecting, managing and sustainably using fresh and coastal marine water resources, this book proposes that sustainable water outcomes require a ‘trans-jurisdictional’ approach to water governance. Focusing on the concept of trans-jurisdictional water governance the book diagnoses barriers and identifies pathways to coherent and coordinated institutional arrangements between and across different bodies of laws at local, national, regional and international levels. It includes case studies from the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the United States and Southeast Asia. Leading specialists offer insights into the pretence and the promise of trans-jurisdictional water governance and provide readers, including students, practitioners, policy-makers and academics, with a basis for better analysing, articulating and synthesising standards of good trans-jurisdictional water governance both in theory and in practice.

This book presents the results of an interdisciplinary project that examined how law, policy and ecological dynamics influence the governance of regional scale water based social-ecological systems in the United States and Australia. The volume explores the obstacles and opportunities for governance that is capable of management, adaptation, and transformation in these regional social-ecological systems as they respond to accelerating environmental change. With the onset of the Anthropocene, global and regional changes in biophysical inputs to these systems will challenge their capacity to respond while maintaining functions of water supply, flood control, hydropower production, water quality, and biodiversity. Governance lies at the heart of the capacity of these systems to meet these challenges. Assessment of water basins in the United States and Australia indicates that state-centric governance of these complex and dynamic social-environmental systems is evolving to a more complex, diverse, and complex array public and private arrangements. In this process, three challenges emerge for water governance to become adaptive to environmental change. First, is the need for legal reform to remove barriers to adaptive governance by authorizing government agencies to prepare for windows of opportunity through adaptive planning, and to institutionalize the results of innovative solutions that arise once a window opens. Second, is the need for legal reform to give government agencies the authority to facilitate and participate in adaptive management and governance. This must be accompanied by parallel legal reform to assure that engagement of private and economic actors and the increase in governmental flexibility does not destabilize basin economies or come at the expense of legitimacy, accountability, equity, and justice. Third, development of means to continually assess thresholds and resilience of social-ecological systems and the adaptive capacity of their current governance to structure actions at multiple scales. The massive investment in water infrastructure on the river basins studied has improved the agricultural, urban and economic sectors, largely at the cost of other social and environmental values. Today the infrastructure is aging and in need of substantial investment for those benefits to continue and adapt to ongoing environmental changes. The renewal of institutions and heavily engineered water systems also presents the opportunity to modernize these systems to address inequity and align with the values and objectives of the 21st century. Creative approaches are needed to transform and modernize water governance that increases the capacity of these water-based social-ecological systems to innovate, adapt, and learn, will provide the tools needed to navigate an uncertain future.

"Water Governance in Motion: Towards Socially and Environmentally Sustainable Water Laws" focuses on the work undertaken by International Environmental Law Research Centre IELRC on water law reforms in India. It seeks to provide a broader understanding of the conceptual framework informing existing water law and ongoing reforms. The book is divided into two parts. The first part critically analyses the context of international law for water reforms and the second part discusses the multifaceted aspects of water sector reforms in India. It assembles in one volume the contributions made by a broad range of scholars working on various law and policy issues arising in the context of water sector reforms in India. The contributions have been specifically selected in order to address the wide range of issues including water distribution to households, irrigation, industrial use and wastewater treatment. These questions are dealt with from a range of perspectives including human rights, environment, agriculture, development and trade. The book would be of interest to academia, researchers, NGOs and policy-makers.