Dealing with critical issues of ownership, control and use of water as a resource, AUSTRALIAN WATER LAW offers practical and up-to-date guidance in an increasingly important area. Interconnected with property law and environmental law, water poses special regulatory challenges because of its character and potential; it also poses opportunities for disputes and litigation. A complex web of state and federal legislation seeks to manage and protect water and water rights, challenging practitioners who are advising on matters like access rights, statutory water entitlements, water planning and resource protection. Commercially, water law affects a widening range of infrastructure development and management projects, while the development of a national water market offers opportunities in trading of water rights, and risks and controls. Kate Stoeckel, Romany Webb and Luke Woodward bring to bear their considerable legal experience in matters involving water rights as well as regulation of the water and sewerage industry and Amy Hankinson offers her significant expertise in environmental law and water management.

A detailed study of the engagement of state law with indigenous rights to water in comparative legal and policy contexts.

This book analyses water allocation law and policy in New Zealand and offers a comparative analysis with Australia. In New Zealand, it is generally accepted that water allocation law has failed to be adequately addressed and New Zealand is now faced with the problem of over-allocation in many catchments. In comparison, Australia has extensive experience in reforming its water law and policy over the last 20 years. This book provides a comparative and critical analysis of the lessons that New Zealand can learn from the Australian experience and offers guidance for the improvement of water allocation outcomes in New Zealand. Starting with the background of water allocation law and policy in New Zealand, the book traces the evolution of legal policies, including the 1967 Water and Soil Conservation Act and the 1991 Resource Management Act, and examines the role they have played in current water allocation issues. The book situates these findings within global challenges, such as the impact of climate change, and the global scarcity of and increasing demand for freshwater resources. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars researching water law and policy, natural resource management and environmental law more broadly. It will also be of use to policy makers and professionals involved in developing and implementing water allocation laws and policies.

Australia’s Water Resources seeks to explore the circumstances underpinning the profound reorientation of attitudes and relationships to water that has taken place in Australia in recent decades. The changing emphasis from development to management of water resources continues to evolve and is reflected in a series of public policy initiatives directed towards rational, efficient and sustainable use of the nation's water. Australia is now recognised as a pacesetter in water reform. Administrative restructuring, water pricing, water markets and trade, integrated water resources management, and the emergence of the private sector, are features of a more economically sound and environmentally compatible water industry. It is important that these changes are documented and their rationale and effectiveness explained. This timely work provides an important synthesis of these issues. This revised paperback edition is a fully corrected reprint of the hardback edition.

Water Act 2007 (Australia) (2018 Edition) The Law Library presents the complete text of the Water Act 2007 (Australia) (2018 Edition). Updated as of May 15, 2018 This book contains: - The complete text of the Water Act 2007 (Australia) (2018 Edition) - A table of contents with the page number of each section

In 2017 four rivers in Aotearoa New Zealand, India, and Colombia were given the status of legal persons, and there was a recent attempt to extend these rights to the Colorado River in the USA. Understanding the implications of creating legal rights for rivers is an urgent challenge for both water resource management and environmental law. Giving rivers legal rights means the law can see rivers as legal persons, thus creating new legal rights which can then be enforced. When rivers are legally people, does that encourage collaboration and partnership between humans and rivers, or establish rivers as another competitor for scarce resources? To assess what it means to give rivers legal rights and legal personality, this book examines the form and function of environmental water managers (EWMs). These organisations have legal personality, and have been active in water resource management for over two decades. EWMs operate by acquiring water rights from irrigators in rivers where there is insufficient water to maintain ecological health. EWMs can compete with farmers for access to water, but they can also strengthen collaboration between traditionally divergent users of the aquatic environment, such as environmentalists, recreational fishers, hunters, farmers, and hydropower. This book explores how EWMs use the opportunities created by giving nature legal rights, such as the ability to participate in markets, enter contracts, hold property, and enforce those rights in court. However, examination of the EWMs unearths a crucial and unexpected paradox: giving legal rights to nature may increase its legal power, but in doing so it can weaken community support for protecting the environment in the first place. The book develops a new conceptual framework to identify the multiple constructions of the environment in law, and how these constructions can interact to generate these unexpected outcomes. It explores EWMs in the USA and Australia as examples, and assesses the implications of creating legal rights for rivers for water governance. Lessons from the EWMs, as well as early lessons from the new ‘river persons,’ show how to use the law to improve river protection and how to begin to mitigate the problems of the paradox.

Aboriginal peoples in Australia have the oldest living cultures in the world. From 1788 the British colonisation of Australia marginalised Aboriginal communities from land and water resources and their traditional rights and interests. More recently, the national water reforms further disenfranchised Aboriginal communities from their property rights in water, continuing to embed severe disadvantage. Overturning aqua nullius aims to cultivate a new understanding of Aboriginal water rights and interests in the context of Aboriginal water concepts and water policy development in Australia. In this award-winning work, Dr Marshall argues that Aboriginal water rights require legal recognition as property rights, and that water access and water infrastructure are integral to successful economic enterprise in Aboriginal communities. Aboriginal peoples social, cultural and economic certainty rests on their right to control and manage customary water. Drawing on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Marshall argues that the reservation of Aboriginal water rights needs to be prioritised above the water rights and interests of other groups. It is only then that we can sweep away the injustice of aqua nullius and provide the first Australians with full recognition and status of their water rights and interests.