SEI Research Fellow Harro van Asselt is editor of RECIEL journal and co-editor of a special issue on major ongoing developments in international water law.
The Review of European Comparative & International Environmental Law (RECIEL), an international journal, bridges the academic and professional spheres, helping scholars, legal practitioners, policy-makers, students and others stay abreast of developments in international, European Community and comparative environmental law and policy.
This is an important time for international water law. The imminent entry into force of the 1997 United Nations (UN) Watercourses Convention and the opening up of the 1992 UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Water Convention to non-UNECE States are significant milestones. For its part, the 2008 International Law Commission (ILC) Draft Articles on the Law of Transboundary Aquifers has become an important point of reference in the international regulation of shared groundwater resources.
These elements attest to the willingness of States to develop rules of a universal scope, which they had previously been very reluctant to do. Furthermore, while for a long time, important legal and institutional developments mostly occurred in parallel at the global, regional and local levels, regional and basin-specific agreements allow for an elaboration of universal rules. It thus becomes clear that the different regulatory levels have been nurturing one another.
This special issue of RECIEL, co-edited by SEI’s Harro van Asselt and Laurence Boisson de Chazournes, a professor of law at the University of Geneva,brings together eminent experts in the area of international water law who provide novel and timely insights in the current state, and future, of international water law.
“Individually, the articles offer useful and thought-provoking analyses of some of the most important issues related to the management of our planet’s water resources; combined, the articles show that the interplay between various legal systems in the area of international water law is producing results,” says van Asselt, who has edited RECIEL since 2012.
Topics covered in the issue include the relationship between two potential water treaties of universal outreach; regional approaches in international water law in Europe, Africa, China and South Asia; the law of transboundary aquifers; the evolution of the ecosystems approach in relation to water resources; and similarities and differences between biodiversity and water management.
Read the special issue (external link to RECIEL)
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