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 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 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.

This book explores the impact of disintegrity on various aspects of governance, as the disregard of ecological conditions produce grave direct effects to human rights (to water or food) and, indirectly, also to human security in several ways. International legal regimes need to be reconsidered and perhaps re-interpreted, in order to correct these situations that affect the commons today. Some believe that our starting point should acknowledge the impact we already have on the natural world, and accept that we now live in the "anthropocene". Others think that the present emphasis on sustainable development needs to be re-defined. Finally, many believe that reconnecting with moral principles both in professional life and in governance in general represents a necessary first step.

This timely book explores the innovative non-doctrinal methods currently being used in environmental law research. Drawing on their extensive experience, expert contributors provide insight into how creative approaches to research can improve understanding of law and policy, leading to more effective legal protection for the environment.

Entry into force of the UN Watercourses Convention in August 2014, and the opening of the UNECE Water Convention to all states in March 2016, are significant milestones in international water law. A comparative analysis of these two global water conventions and the 1995 Mekong Agreement reveals that all three instruments are generally compatible. Nonetheless, the international legal principles and processes set forth in the two conventions can render the Mekong Agreement more up-to-date, robust and practical. The Governance Regime of the Mekong River Basin: Can the Global Water Conventions Strengthen the 1995 Mekong Agreement? contends that strengthening the Agreement would be timely, given the increasing pressures associated with the rapid hydropower development within the basin and the gradually emerging disputes therein. Due to these fast-moving developments, Kinna and Rieu-Clarke strongly recommend that the Mekong states should seriously consider joining both conventions in order to buttress and clarify key provisions of the 1995 Mekong Agreement.

This book offers recent insights into some of the burning issues of our times: climate change, exposure to chemicals, refugee issues and the ecological harm that accompanies conflict situations. It brings together a group of pioneering scholars, mostly legal experts but also thinkers from various scientific disciplines, to discuss concerns from around the globe – from Australia and New Zealand, to Canada and the United States, European countries including Germany, Italy, Britain and the Czech Republic, as well as the African continent. Presenting the latest climate and ecology-related case law, as well as analyses of the conceptual issues that underlie international problems, it covers the extinction of species, the basic role of women and Indigenous peoples in protecting the environment, the failure of today’s states to protect the human right to a safe environment and public health, the harm arising from industrial food production, and the problems resulting from a growth-oriented economy. Lastly, the book examines various international legal principles and regulations that have been proposed to defend global ecological rights.