Presenter: Prof. Gabriel Eckstein, Texas A&M University School of Law
Sub-theme
6. Innovation for Water Governance and Management
Topic
6-7. Role of national and international law
Body
Groundwater resources that traverse political boundaries have become increasingly important sources of freshwater in international and intranational arenas worldwide. This is a direct extension of the growing need for new sources of freshwater, as well as the impact that excessive extraction, pollution, climate change, and other anthropogenic activities have had on surface waters. It is also a function of the growing realization that groundwater respects no political boundaries, and that aquifers traverse jurisdictional lines at all levels of political geography. Due to this growing understanding, questions pertaining to responsibility and liability are now being raised in relation to the exploitation and administration of cross-border aquifers. This occurs both at the international level where two or more sovereign nations, as well as at the domestic level where two or more subnational political units, overlay a common aquifer. The law applicable to transboundary groundwater resources at both levels of governance is primitive and lacking. Moreover, the relationship of groundwater law to surface water law is often non-existent. While there are a few promising trends in the international realm, rules addressing questions of responsibility and liability in relation to the use, management, exploitation, and administration of transboundary aquifers remain elusive. To provide a foundation for the development of such laws and regulations, this presentation will explore circumstances under which the use, management, exploitation, or administration of a transboundary aquifer might cause harm to a neighboring political unit and, thereby, result in legal responsibility and/or liability. It will assess cause and effect relationships through the use of various conceptual models of transboundary aquifers. Notions of gaining and losing stream relationships, unconfined and confined aquifers, natural versus anthropogenic contamination, and other concepts will be utilized to describe scenarios in which harm could traverse a political boundary. The presentation will then translate that analysis into standards of responsibility and liability that are more common in the legal realm. The presentation will serve to launch a book by the same title that will be published online in Summer 2023 by The Groundwater Project (http://bit.ly/3IZTcPE).