WaterWired

Water International 38 (2) - April 2013: 1997 UN Watercourses Convention - 21st Century Relevance?

Looks like an excellent, timely, issue!

This is not an open-access journal; you'll have to pay for articles unless you are a member of IWRA. By clicking on this link you should be able to access abstracts and/or the first page view. If your institution has an online subscription to WI and you are logged on to that network, free article donwload should be possible. The editorial and the last article on China appear to be freely downloadable.

I did not realize the convention is not yet in force; five more countries must accede to it for it to be adopted. Thirty-five countries are needed; Niger just became #30.

Volume 38, Issue 2, 2013
Water International (April 2013)

Special Issue: The 1997 UN Watercourses Convention – What Relevance in the 21st Century?

 

Guest editorial

Alistair Rieu-Clarke, Remy Kinna & Flavia Loures
pages 109-111

Articles

Utilization of shared international freshwater resources – the meaning and role of “equity” in international water law
Owen McIntyre
pages 112-129

Does Article 6 (Factors Relevant to Equitable and Reasonable Utilization) in the UN Watercourses Convention misdirect riparian countries?
Bruce Lankford
pages 130-145

The UN Watercourses Convention: the éminence grise behind cooperation on transboundary water resources
Christina Leb
pages 146-155

The preservation of freshwater ecosystems of international watercourses and the integration of rules – an interpretative mechanism
Jing Lee
pages 156-165

Article 33 of the UN Watercourses Convention: a step forward for dispute settlement?
Attila Tanzi & Enrico Milano
pages 166-179

A new human rights-based approach to the UN Watercourses Convention
Claudia Cinelli
pages 180-191

The influence of the UN Watercourses Convention on the development of a treaty regime in the Nile River basin
Musa M. Abseno
pages 192-203

Revisiting the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty
Hamid Sarfraz
pages 204-216

Exploring China's transboundary water treaty practice through the prism of the UN Watercourses Convention
Huiping Chen, Alistair Rieu-Clarke & Patricia Wouters
pages 217-230

Enjoy!

"In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." - Galileo Galilei

From @GWPnews - Tuesday Twofer: 1) Transboundary Water Cooperation; 2) Economic Value: Water Secure World

A couple of good reports from the Global Water Partnership's Technical Committee. 

1) International Law - Facilitating Transboundary Water Cooperation GWP Technical Committee Background Paper No. 17, by Prof. Patricia Wouters

Pat started her career in Alberta; she is a good friend and an even better lawyer.

Download Tec_17_final_final

Published in the International Year of Water Cooperation (2013), this paper explores how international law facilitates transboundary cooperation in a manner that is accessible to the wider transboundary water community. It discusses the norms and principles contained in treaties and rules of customary law, and examines how these work in selected case studies from across the GWP network.

2) The Economic Value of Moving Toward a More Water Secure World
GWP Technical Committee Background Paper No. 18, by Dale Whittington, Claudia Sadoff and Maura Allaire

In a period where public financial resources are particularly limited, how do we prioritize investments in water security?  Which aspects are most critical for enabling growth?  What are the most significant investments needed to increase water security?  And how can economics inform policy-makers who must decide how to allocate resources to water management? This paper provides a synthesis of current thinking about these complex issues and guidance for what has to be done.

 Enjoy!

"A conference is a gathering of people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done." - Fred Allen

Valuing Water Quality in Urban Watersheds: Comparative Analysis of Burnt Bridge Creek, WA, & Johnson Creek, OR

Dr. Noelwah R. Netusil, the Stanley H. Cohn Professor of Economics at Reed College, graced us with the aforementioned presentation at our final GEMinar (Geography, Environmental Science, and Marine Resource Management seminar) for the Winter term. 

She gave an excellent lecture on a fascinating topic. Below is a PDF of her PPT; a full-length paper is in preparation.

Download Netusil-OSU-2013

Her work is part of the NSF-funded Portland-Vancouver Urban Long-Term Research Area (ULTRA) project.

Factoid: Like yours truly, she hails from Long Island, NY - the town of Sound Beach, on Long Island Sound.

 Enjoy!

“I was quite depressed two weeks ago when I spent an afternoon at Brentano's Bookshop in New York and was looking at the kind of books most people read. Once you see that you lose all hope.” - Friedrich A. von Hayek

When Groundwater Governance Goes Bad

A few days ago David Zetland (shown here with his pet Komodo dragon) had a real good post on groundwater governance gone bad in Spain: "An expensive groundwater governance failure". It's well worth your time to read.

I also received the same document from a friend on which his post is based (David has a link to it on his site):

Download Factsheet_aguas_fin

You can practice your Spanish; it is from WWF España  (en español).  

¡Disfrute!

"One hand washes the other, and both wash the face." - Translation of a Spanish proverb on cooperation

Flood Control and Takings: Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States

I'm a bit late on this issue. Ignorance is...well...dangerous.

Friend and colleague Jerry Sehlke sent me an email this morning that he received from LSI soliciting his participation in a telephone seminar to be held on 25 January 2013. Here is how it began:

On December 4, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion in Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States, holding that when the federal government floods property, even temporarily, the Fifth Amendment may require the government to pay just compensation to the landowner. 

The Court's decision eliminates a carve-out from takings liability for government actions resulting in episodic or temporary flooding of land: "No decision of [the Supreme Court] authorizes a blanket temporary-flooding exception" to takings jurisprudence. This means that landowners are now eligible to establish that their land has been inversely condemned by government actions resulting in temporary flooding, under the same standards as any other takings plaintiff. 

Consequently, water management actions that could result in flooding should be carefully scrutinized to take preventative steps to avoid flooding and reduce potential takings liability. Likewise, attorneys whose clients experience episodic or periodic flooding of their land should carefully evaluate whether a takings claim is a possibility. 

In this one-hour TeleBriefing, three experienced litigators -- including the attorney who argued in the Supreme Court for the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission -- will discuss how this case changes the rules for inverse condemnations involving flooding. Topics will include: 

• The crucial distinction between a temporary flooding and periodic floodings 
• Whether the intent of the flooding entity matters in an inverse condemnation case 
• Legal standards to which all flooding actions are now subject 

Here is the call's agenda.

I have to admit I was unaware of this case.

Jerry wondered whether this decision might hamstring the USACE's efforts at flood control, especially when the decision is made to flood one part of the system to reduce damage to another part. 

One colleague replied:

As to the case - I don't think it will have much application to the Corps, especially in the Mississippi where any deliberate flooding has been adjudicated thru leases, purchases or tradeoffs (people in backwater areas get flooded when the backwater levee, which is designed to overtop before the main line levees, overtops. Before the backwater levees were built they flooded more often - and agreed that some protection was better than none.)

Case law has supported the idea that if a structure reduced flooding, to be a taking, the flooding caused by the structure  had to be worse than would have occurred before the structure.

Here is Prof. Noah Hall's (Great Lakes Law blog) take:

The U.S. Supreme Court just issued a unanimous decision in Arkansas Game and Fish Commission v. United States, allowing a landowner to proceed with a takings claim for compensation from temporary flooding caused by the federal government’s operation of a dam. The decision reversed a 2011 Federal Circuit Court of Appeals decision that would have only allowed takings claims for “permanent or inevitably recurring” flooding.

However, the Court’s decision allowing a landowner’s takings claim for temporary flooding to proceed as a matter of federal takings law is not the end of the case. The more difficult and fundamental issue is whether, as a matter of state property law, ownership of riparian land in Arkansas comes with some expectation of temporary flooding. Justice Ginsburg wrote: “The determination whether a taking has occurred includes consideration of the property owner’s distinct investment backed expectations, a matter often informed by the law in force in the State in which the property is located.”

You can read the rest of Prof. Hall's post, in which he addresses relevant Arkansas water law and an amicus curiae brief filed by himself and two colleagues.

Fascinating. More stuff to ponder...

"A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers." - H. L. Mencken