Liquid Relations
Contested Water Rights and Legal Complexity
Water management plays an increasingly critical role in national and international policy agendas. Growing scarcity, overuse, and pollution, combined with burgeoning demand, have made socio-political and economic conflicts almost unavoidable. Proposals to address water shortages are usually based on two key assumptions: (1) water is a commodity that can be bought and sold and (2) “states,” or other centralized entities, should control access to water.
Liquid Relations criticizes these assumptions from a socio-legal perspective. Eleven case studies examine laws, distribution, and irrigation in regions around the world, including the United States, Nepal, Indonesia, Chile, Ecuador, India, and South Africa. In each case, problems are shown to be both ecological and human-made. The essays also consider the ways that gender, ethnicity, and class differences influence water rights and control.
In the concluding chapter, the editors draw on the essays’ findings to offer an alternative approach to water rights and water governance issues. By showing how issues like water scarcity and competition are embedded in specific resource use and management histories, this volume highlights the need for analyses and solutions that are context-specific rather than universal.
This book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the global problem of increasing competition for fresh water by applying the insights of legal pluralism to the understudied issue of water rights.
Dik Roth is a researcher and lecturer on legal anthropology, natural resources management, and development in the law and governance group of the department of social sciences at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Rutgerd Boelens and Margreet Zwarteveen are researchers and lecturers on water rights, water management, and development policies in the department of environmental sciences, also at Wageningen University.
Prescribing gender equity? the case of the Tukucha Nala irrigation system, central Nepal / Prantia Bhushan Udas and Margreet Zwarteveen
Defending indigenous water rights with the laws of adominant culture : the case of the United States / David H. Getches
In the shadow of uniformity, Balinese irrigation management in apublic works irrigation system in Luwu, South Sulawesi, Indonesia / Dik Roth
Anomalous water rights and the politics of normalization, collective water control and privatization policies in the Andean region / Rutgerd Boelens and Margreet Zwarteveen
Complexities of water governance : rise and fall of groundwater for urban use / Amreeta Regmi
Special law : recognition and denial of diversity in Andean water control / Rutgerd Boelens, Ingo Gentes, Armando Guevara Gil, and Patricia Urteaga
A win-some lose-all game, social differentiation, and politics of groundwater markets in north Gujarat / Anjal Prakash and Vishwa Ballabh
Redressing racial inequities through water law in South Africa : interaction and contest among legal frameworks / Barbara Van Koppen and Nitish Jha
Routes to water rights / Bryan Bruns
Analyzing water rights, multiple uses, and intersectoral water transfers / Ruth Meinzen-Dick and Rajendra Pradhan
Water rights and legal pluralism : beyond analysis and recognition / Margreet Zwarteveen, Dik Roth, and Rutgerd Boelens
