This book is about the issues, challenges and directions currently faced by water as a key resource for mankind. The book aims at providing a finer understanding of the water regulatory future. The contributions in this book are grouped around specific themes. In Part I, the contributions address the water challenge to public international law. In Part II, the authors explore the most pressing ethical, legal, and social issues. In Part III, the discussion covers the economic drivers shaping the future of water.
Water is an essential resource for mankind, yet many countries around the world are currently facing mounting freshwater management challenges, with climate change and new regional imbalances threatening to aggravate this situation further. This timely book offers a unique interdisciplinary inquiry into the issues and challenges water regulation will face in the coming years. The book brings together economists, political scientists, geographers, and legal scholars to offer a number of proposals for the future of water regulation. The contributions in this book are grouped around specific themes. In the Part I, the contributions address the challenges which water poses to public international law. In Part II, the authors explore the most pressing ethical, legal, and social issues. Finally, the discussion in Part III covers the economic drivers shaping the future of water. This discerning book covers all of the primary actors in the water world, including governments, companies, international organizations, and citizens. With an original introduction by the editor and bringing a diverse collection of perspectives into a single collection, the book will be an essential resource for scholars and practitioners in legal and policy fields such as trade and investment, human rights and the environment, as well as in international relations.
This book contributes to the debate about the suitability and challenges of the Smart Water Management (SWM) approach. Smart Water Management has increasingly been promoted to manage water and wastewater more efficiently and cost effectively by industries and utilities in urban contexts at regional or city scales, while reducing overall consumption. It is based on the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to provide real-time, automated data to resolve water challenges. Many of these technologies are complex and costly, however, and the approach tends to overlook cheaper and less high-tech (softer) approaches to address the same problems. Yet there may be opportunities for using them even in resource short rural communities in developing countries. The book includes examples of SWM systems in practice in diverse locations from Korea, Mexico, Paris, the Canary Islands and southern Africa, aimed at addressing a diverse set of problems, including monitoring water supply to refugees. Critical voices highlight the need for smart institutions to accompany smart technologies, the absurdity of applying SWM to dysfunctional legacy infrastructure systems, whether its adoption raises moral hazards, and whether SWM is the latest example of hegemonic masculinity in water management. The chapters in this book were originally published in Water International.
Water Services Disputes in International Arbitration Reconsidering the Nexus of Investment Protection, Environment, and Human Rights by Xu Qian The argument that universal access to water is a human right is based on the fact that life on Earth cannot exist without water. Yet the enormous cost of building and maintaining water service infrastructure, purifying, monitoring quality, and providing sanitation services is beyond the means of many of the States most in need. Foreign investment is thus mandated—hence the often acrimonious tension manifest in investor-State disputes over water rights. This book offers the first in-depth analysis of both international treaty norms and their interpretation by arbitral tribunals applicable to investment in water and sanitation services, complete with thoroughly researched recommendations for those arbitral practitioners in the eye of the storm. Like no previous study the book clearly reveals how to reconcile the economic and fundamental human interests arising from investment in water and sanitation services under the international investment regime. Among many vital issues, the author highlights the importance of the following: legitimacy of a State’s alleged regulatory objectives, the suitability of the measures undertaken to achieve the objective, and whether there are less restrictive means available; legal framework and stability of the State; applicable law, changes in law, and emergency circumstances; economic issues such as water pricing; profit-driven private companies’ reluctance to serve the poor; investment tribunals’ generation of a “regulatory and jurisprudential regime” on water and sanitation services; and determination of liability in relation to expropriation, fair and equitable treatment, and necessity. Arguing that the current investment treaty and arbitral case law framework can regulate water and sanitation services if certain interpretations are favored by adjudicators, the author offers viable, sustainable, and reasonable legal solutions. A detailed annex presents cases decided before a variety of arbitral tribunals, as well as relevant WTO and ICJ cases, and reviews critical literature in the field. The increasing number of cases involved with States’ regulatory measures shows that stakes around water services generate specific legal problems which are new in the world of international economic law. As an incisive investigation of what has been called the “incursion of investment tribunal decisions into the regulatory autonomy of host States,” this profound and innovative analysis provides a coherent and consistent method of review that provides greater certainty to both States and investors and deters abuse of power. It will be welcomed by policymakers and stakeholders interested in the implications of “globalization” of water services for the capacity to adapt to climate change and will suggest ways to enable States to better manage vital water services, even after privatization to foreign companies.
Volume 9 of the EYIEL focusses on natural resources law understood as a special area of international economic law. In light of increasing conflicts over access to and the use of natural resources and of their impact on political, social and environmental aspects, the contributions of this volume analyse to which extent international economic law can contribute to the sustainable exploitation, management and distribution of natural resources. The volume collects contributions on general principles of natural resources law, the importance of natural resources for trade, investment and European economic law as well as analyses of particular sectors and areas including fracking, timber, space and deep seabed mining and natural resources in the arctic region. In its section on regional developments, EYIEL 9 addresses two regional integration systems which are usually not at the centre of public interest, but which deserve all the more attention due to their special relations with Europe: The Eurasian Economic Union and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Further EYIEL sections address recent WTO and investment case law as well as developments at the IMF. The volume also contains review essays of important recent books in international economic law and other aspects of international law which are connected to international economic relations. The chapter "Sovereignty, Ownership and Consent in Natural Resource Contracts: From Concepts to Practice" by Lorenzo Cotula is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.
An ecosystem in freefall, a shrinking water supply for cities and agriculture, an antiquated network of failure-prone levees—this is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the major hub of California's water system. Written by a team of independent water experts, this analysis of the latest data evaluates proposed solutions to the Delta's myriad problems. Through in-depth economic and ecological analysis, the authors find that the current policy of channeling water exports through the Delta is not sustainable for any interest. Employing a peripheral canal-conveying water around the Delta instead of through it—as part of a larger habitat and water management plan appears to be the best strategy to maintain both a high-quality water supply and at the same time improve conditions for native fish and wildlife. This important assessment includes integrated analysis of long term ecosystem and water management options and demonstrates how issues such as climate change and sustainability will shape the future. Published in cooperation with the Public Policy Institute of California
