July 2, 2012: Panel 1D - Governing Water Supplies

Governing Water Supplies Video

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 11:20:00 PDT

Levels and Limits of Sustainable Development, from Principles to Legislation: the Water Sector

Nicola Lugaresi — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 11:20:00 PDT

While sustainable development was officially affirmed twenty years ago, at the Rio de Janeiro Conference (and had already been implicitly present at the Stockholm Conference, twenty years earlier), the quality of national legislation has not significantly improved in the last years. Moreover, the principle itself is constantly stated (both in general environmental legislation and in water sectional legislation), but the specific provisions do not show the substantial change that could have been expected.

As for European Union water legislation, the main step forward occurred in year 2000 with the Water Framework Directive (Directive 2000/60/EC) that faced water issues in a basically holistic way (and national legislation followed). Still, the new approach was more influenced by the need of a legislative rationalization than by the sustainable development principle.

The paper aims at investigating whether sustainable development has exhausted its effects, and whether the constant reference to it that is made in national and regional policies, strategies and legislation can still have a meaning, or if it should be substantially limited to an international level.

The paper will therefore analyze European Union and national (the case study will be Italy) sustainable development policies and strategies, trying to find out what can be the substantial contents to be transferred to specific sectors. The paper will then analyze water legislation (at both levels), trying to find out how sustainable development still affects (or may affect) public choices.

The study of the dynamics of multi-level governance and the interaction of such levels will lead to detect the limits and the drawbacks of the sustainable development principle (apart from its general international role). The following step will be to identify its utility in guiding legislative and administrative choices. Its benefits, analyzing the relationship with the use of public discretionary powers, will be pointed out, with special reference to the water sector.

Green Water: Can Rio+ 20 Succeed Where Others Have Failed?

Rebecca Bates — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 11:20:00 PDT

The Stockholm Declaration was the first international instrument to acknowledge the imperative to safeguard water resources for present and future generations. In the years following Stockholm, water become a specific issue of environmental and humanitarian concern, with a number of instruments including the Mar del Plata Action Plan, Agenda 21, Rio Declaration, Convention of the Rights on the Rights of the Child, Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, United Nations Watercourses Convention, Millennium Development Goals and most recently resolutions from the United Nations General Assembly and Human Rights Council acknowledging the right to water within international law and providing a framework for sustainable water management. However, as the world prepares for Rio + 20 this June, there remains approximately between 3 – 4 billion individuals without access to adequate water services. Consequently, despite the plethora of law making and commitments that have been made over the past forty years, water resources remain under pressure and additional mechanisms are still needed to balance human and ecological need.

This paper will consider the key outcomes of Rio + 20 in the context of water supply and ask whether the Conference’s commitments have the capacity to both protect water resources and meet consumptive needs. Specifically, it will examine the implications of the ‘Green Economy’ for water supply and ask whether a return to sustainability has the potential to enhance the initiatives undertaken during the era of the Millennium Development Goals. As part of this discussion, the paper will explore the meaning of sustainability and question how such an approach may vary from previous initiatives. It will also consider how the acknowledgement of the right to water has changed the landscape of water management.

Since acknowledging the need to conserve water resources, the international community has struggled to reconcile resource conservation with consumptive need. Rio + 20 provides another opportunity for the world to provide the framework and mechanisms through which both outcomes can be attained.