As the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment has shown, despite their importance to human well-being and to biodiversity, the world’s freshwater ecosystems are constantly being degraded. Experiences from around the world show that there are existing solutions to mitigate this problem. However, recently developed instruments that promote sustainable freshwater policies require an effective and efficient legal framework, which still needs to be implemented or even developed in many legal systems around the globe.
The IUCN Environmental Law Programme, through the Environmental Law Centre and the Commission on Environmental Law (CEL) Specialist Group on Water and Wetlands, is responding to this need by providing technical advice in the form of legal analyses and legislative drafting to IUCN members, developing country governments and international water institutions. Furthermore, the ELP contributes to major IUCN initiatives such as the Water and Nature Initiative (WANI), whose main goal is the mainstreaming of an ecosystem approach into catchment policies, planning and management.
Water Law
The Environmental Law Centre (ELC) in cooperation with CEL has participated in different initiatives to support the reform of water legislation towards integrated management around the world. In the regional context of South American water laws, the ELC has produced a publication aiming to provide a critical analysis of the existing legislation in the region, and of the reforms actually taking place in these countries, bringing in an environmental perspective. The in-depth diagnostic of strengths and weaknesses of the existing legislation in each South American country and a series of recommendations have already led to changes in the legislation of some countries. In the case of Paraguay, thanks to the Institute for Environmental Law and Economics (IDEA), an IUCN member, the study introduced changes to groundwater legislation through review of the civil code. See: Gobernanza del agua en América del Sur: dimensión ambiental, EPLP No. 53 (2006).
In the context of the effects of climate change on water resources, the ELC is developing a study on glaciers conservation, with special focus on South America. The publication analyzes the existing lack of regulation and policy on these fragile resources. Glaciers are one of the largest reservoirs of fresh water in the world. However, glaciers started to melt in the 1980s and nowadays this process is being accelerated by the climate change effects, which implies a series of severe environmental risks. The study offers recommendations on its management and protection such as the elaboration of an international framework agreement or the subsidiary application of national water resources legislation. See: Aspectos jurídicos de la conservación de los glaciares, EPLP No. 61.
Furthermore, as a result of a regional workshop on the legal and institutional aspects of natural resources management in Burkina Faso, which was jointly organized by the ELC and the IUCN Regional Office for West Africa, the ELP has started to raise awareness and share its knowledge about managing water resources in a sustainable manner in the region. This initiative has led to a publication that examines issues from the global, regional, national and subnational perspectives, discusses aspects of statutory rights, customary laws, preservation of ecosystems, integrated management, desertification, and river basin authorities. See: Water Governance in West Africa, EPLP No. 50 (2002).
In the future, the ELP plans to establish a Water Law Helpdesk which will offer a ready response tailored to country requests. The aim of this project is to become active and provide legal technical assistance based on a country’s own political will to close its legal gaps and overcome existing institutional obstacles.
International Water Governance
The ELP also intends to address the full extent of the legal governance landscape affecting the conservation of shared freshwater resources from around the world.
The rules concerning freshwater ecosystems conservation are dispersed in a multiplicity of instruments, ranging from international agreements to soft law. National legislation and court decisions are also relevant. In order to provide a better understanding of the existing governance arrangements at the international level, the ELP has developed a compilation and a short analysis of selected watercourse agreements for shared water resources from around the world, along with an analysis of other multilateral environmental agreements that may impact the conservation of freshwater ecosystems. See: International Water Governance: Conservation on Freshwater Ecosystems, Vol. 1 International Agreements - Compilation and Analysis, EPLP No. 55 (2004).
Global human rights instruments do not explicitly mention water as a human right. The right to water may, however, be regarded as an integral component of other human rights, such as the right to life, food, housing, adequate standard of living. The ELP has produced a publication that aims at explaining the content of the right to water. See: Water as a Human Right?, EPLP No. 51 (2004).
Furthermore, the ELC is contributing to the WANI toolkit series. These publications are guides on cutting-edge water governance themes that address practitioners as their key audience. In the past, the ELC has drafted the legal chapters of FLOW – The essentials of environmental flows, as well as PAY – Establishing payments for watershed services.
Currently, the ELC is producing the toolkit RULE. The goal of this book is to contribute to “greening” water governance; in other words, to provide for the incorporation of environmental considerations into water policies, laws and institutions. RULE will be a user friendly guide, with a sufficient level of generality to be used by non-lawyers, clearly explaining the legal and institutional arrangements in the water sector, and offering guidance to managers and decision makers confronting critical governance issues. RULE will provide the instruments to trial and test the water laws and policies at the national and sub-national levels, and the tools to update them, when necessary.
In the near future, the ELC, in close collaboration with IUCN WANI and the IUCN East African Regional Office, will develop another publication within the WANI toolkit series. This toolkit, called SHARE, will be targeting water practitioners, for whom it provides an overview of the world’s shared water resources, and, drawing from case studies around the world, describes and analyzes the legal frameworks, institutions, joint management interventions, and financing and partnership strategies that have been developed and used to support the joint governance of trans-boundary waters.
Wetlands
At the request of the Ramsar Standing Committee, ELC has prepared draft guidelines entitled “General guidance for interpreting ‘urgent national interests’ under Article 2.5 of the Convention and considering compensation under Article 4.2 of the Convention.” The guidelines aim to interpret critical provisions of the Ramsar Convention, which allows Contracting Parties to delete or restrict the boundaries of wetlands already included by it in the List of Wetlands of International Importance (and to compensate for any loss of wetland resources due to such deletion or restriction) on the grounds of urgent natural interest.
The ELP has already developed a structured framework that sets wetlands in their scientific, economic and legal context, and describes the main legal issues involved in implementing the Ramsar Convention. Wetlands, Water and the Law, EPLP No. 38 (1999).
In addition, the ELP has analyzed the adoption and implementation of the Ramsar Convention in a specific country. The Ramsar Convention on the Conservation of Wetlands - A Legal Analysis of the Adoption and Implementation of the Convention in Denmark, EPLP No. 23 (1989).
Integrated Water Resource Management
The Environmental Law Centre has prepared brief issues papers to introduce non-lawyers to the importance of the role of the law in integrated water resources management. The issues that have been addressed are:
Basin Management and Devolution of Authority
Conservation and Integrated Water Resources Management
Effective Water Pollution Legislation
Adapting to Climate Change
Environmental Flows
Trading in Water: Defining Property Rights
Human Rights and Water (Water as a Human Right? - Full version - Summary Fact Sheet)
Environmental Impact Assessment
Indigenous Issues
A Global Water Convention
A joint FAO/IUCN project on customary water rights has also explored the interfaces between customary and water rights in a selected number of countries. To date country studies have been produced on the following countries:
Ghana
Guyana
Nigeria
Ecuador
Colombia
Argentina
Canada
|
