Indigenous Water Rights in Law and Regulation
Lessons from Comparative Experience

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

Elizabeth Jane Macpherson (Author)

9781108473064, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 August 2019

310 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.1 cm, 0.57 kg

'[…] a highly relevant book, contributing to the debates about rights of nature in general, and legal personhood for rivers more specifically. The case studies […] are well chosen. Macpherson's use and comparison of case studies of countries where water rights have been historically denied to indigenous groups show the need for approaches that move beyond repairing historical injustices by narrowly defined 'traditional' water uses in a generally constraining context. Ongoing injustices can only be effectively tackled by creating indigenous jurisdictions for water governance and effecting a substantive (re-)distribution of water for multiple purposes, including socio-economic development.' Dik Roth, The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law

Indigenous Water Rights in Law and Regulation responds to an unresolved question in legal scholarship: how are (or how might be) indigenous peoples' rights included in contemporary regulatory regimes for water. This book considers that question in the context of two key trajectories of comparative water law and policy. First, the tendency to 'commoditise' the natural environment and use private property rights and market mechanisms in water regulation. Second, the tendency of domestic and international courts and legislatures to devise new legal mechanisms for the management and governance of water resources, in particular 'legal person' models. This book adopts a comparative research method to explore opportunities for accommodating indigenous peoples' rights in contemporary water regulation, with country studies in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Chile and Colombia, providing much needed attention to the role of rights and regulation in determining indigenous access to, and involvement with, water in comparative law.

1. Introduction
2. Justifying indigenous water rights
3. Regulating indigenous water rights
4. The limited recognition of indigenous water rights in Australia
5. Water rights for M?ori in Aotearoa New Zealand
6. Rivers as subjects and indigenous water rights in Colombia
7. Recognising and allocating indigenous water rights in Chile
8. Indigenous water rights in comparative law: jurisdiction and distribution
9. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Hydrology & the hydrosphere [RBK], International environmental law [LBBP], Public international law [LBB], International law [LB], Law [L], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Social & cultural history [HBTB]