Law for Water Management: A Guide to Concepts and Approaches

Water is a fundamental resource for life and plays an essential role in agriculture, power generation, social development and health. Increases in human population and demographic shifts towards more urban areas have heightened demand for water, creating new challenges in managing water resources, water supply and sanitation infrastructure. Increased demand has also created conflicts over national and international water resources. The future will call for improved management of water resources to address these and other challenges. Effective water management relies on a wide range of institutions and actors playing distinct but inter-connected roles. Coordination and cooperation are essential to ensure effective water management, health protection and sustainable development. Good water policies implemented by nationally tailored water legislation and other tools can facilitate coordination and help governments achieve their water management objectives. Close cooperation will be needed between those with technical water expertise and those with expertise in legislation and regulation. The legal profession has a suite of tools that may provide a better or worse “fit” to a specific water management issue. The community of water managers, for its part, has a suite of technical tools that it uses to respond to regulatory challenges. Although communication between these two groups is vital in order to assess potential design and implementation issues, it is often constrained by different perspectives and vocabularies. A common lack of understanding can impede innovation and identification of the most effective solutions to water management problems. This text was conceived by staff of FAO and WHO as a resource to bridge the gap between these disparate groups. It is intended to support legal experts, policy experts and other interested individuals in understanding the scientific and technical issues associated with water, health and development, whilst raising awareness on the part of scientists and technical experts regarding the legal and policy issues surrounding water management. FAO and WHO address water-related issues according to their respective mandates and perspectives. FAO, in its role as an advisor to governments and neutral forum for inter-governmental consultations on issues of food and agriculture, is concerned with water as a resource and as an integral element of sustainable agriculture and rural development. WHO, on the other hand, was created for the purpose of ensuring health for all people and, accordingly, approaches water from a global health perspective. Marrying these two important objectives will be an important step toward improving water management practices.