Water Law Policy

Water plays a key role in addressing the most pressing global challenges of our time, including climate change adaptation, food and energy security, environmental sustainability and the promotion of peace and stability. This comprehensive handbook explores the pivotal place of law and policy in efforts to ensure that water enables positive responses to these challenges and provides a basis for sound governance. The book reveals that significant progress has been made in recent decades to strengthen the governance of water resource management at different scales, including helping to address international and sub-national conflicts over transboundary water resources. It demonstrates that ‘effective’ laws and policies are fundamental drivers for the safe, equitable and sustainable utilization of water. However, it is also shown that what might constitute an effective law or policy related to water resources management is still hotly debated. As such, the handbook provides an important and definitive reference text for all studying water governance and management.

This book provides an insightful and critical assessment of the state of Canadian water governance and policy. It adopts a multidisciplinary variety of perspectives and considers local, basin, provincial and national scales. Canada’s leading authorities from the social sciences, life and natural sciences address pressing water issues in a non-technical language, making them accessible to a wide audience. Even though Canada is seen as a water-rich country, with 7% of the world’s reliable flow of freshwater and many of the world’s largest rivers, the country nevertheless faces a number of significant water-related challenges, stemming in part from supply-demand imbalances but also a range of water quality issues. Against the backdrop of a water policy landscape that has changed significantly in recent years, this book therefore seeks to examine water-related issues that are not only important for the future of Canadian water management but also provide insights into transboundary management, non-market valuation of water, decentralized governance methods, the growing importance of the role of First Nations peoples, and other topics in water management that are vital to many jurisdictions globally. The book also presents forward-looking approaches such as resilience theory and geomatics to shed light on emerging water issues. Researchers, students and those directly involved in the management of Canadian waters will find this book a valuable source of insight. In addition, this book will appeal to policy analysts, people concerned about Canadian water resources specifically as well as global water issues.

This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the most important water-related issues that centre on Italy, analysed from several disciplinary perspectives – such as hydrology, economics, law, sociology, environmental sciences and policy studies – in order to promote full understanding of the challenges the country is facing and the ways it could best tackle them. Despite the misconception that Italy is a water-scarce country, is in fact quite rich in water resources. Such resources, however, are unevenly distributed over the Italian territory. Italy’s northern regions rely on quite an abundant quantity of freshwater, whereas in the southern area water endowment is limited. Moreover, climatic differences between North and South contribute to widen the divide. This disparity has notable consequences of socio-economic character, some of which, in turn, feed back into the environmental conditions of Italian regions: pollution, floods, landslides and droughts are among the problems affecting the country. There are numerous features of water use and consumption that distinguish Italy from other comparable countries, such as the significant role played by agriculture (a water-intensive activity), a lead position in the consumption of bottled water, lower-than-average prices of water and a far-from-optimal efficiency of waterworks. All such aspects, and many others, make Italy an essential case study.

Papers prepared as background to a workshop held in Toronto. Includes sections on northern water issues and Indian rights to water on reserve lands.

This volume of the Elgar Encyclopedia of Environmental Law provides thorough and detailed coverage of the changing meanings and roles of water law, from the local to the global. It examines the rules of ownership, rights of use, and dispute resolution that address access, allocation, and protection of water resources. Written by leading scholars and practitioners from across the globe, this authoritative volume will be a vital resource for all scholars and students of environmental law.

'Water Law and Policy' examines water management in Europe and the difficulties involved in creating integrated water management institutions. The book concentrates on institutional development, norms and guiding principles, implementation strategies, and public participation mechanisms at the local, EU and global levels.