Addressing Water Security Challenges: The International Law ‘Duty to Cooperate’ as a Limit on Absolute State Sovereignty

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Wouters
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Water Security ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Security Challenges

Part II Predominant Security Challenges and International Law, Economic and Resource Security, Ch.29 Water Security

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thielbörger Pierre
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Water Security ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Economic Significance ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Water Wars ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
Access To Water ◽  
The Right

This chapter addresses water security, which is a contested normative concept, without clear definitions, meanings, or interpretations. With this in mind, the term ‘water security’ must be understood in two distinct ways: security through water (meaning individuals’ access to water to sustain their lives and livelihoods) and security against water (meaning the absence of water-related threats, both natural and man-made). The concept of water security as security through water is a tool to guarantee certain minimum standards of water for individuals. This aspect of water security is closely related to the idea of a human right to water as derived from and related to other human rights such as the right to life, an adequate standard of living, and the right to the highest attainable standard of health. However, water can also pose threats. For instance, given its outstanding political and economic significance, the likelihood of ‘water wars’ has been discussed in international law and politics for some time. Special challenges to water security include the widespread privatization of water, climate change as catalyst for future water conflicts and water-related natural disasters, and the often forgotten ‘sanitation gap’.

Legitimacy

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
International Courts ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Supranational Institutions

This collection brings together scholars of jurisprudence and political theory to probe the question of ‘legitimacy’. It offers discussions that interrogate the nature of legitimacy, how legitimacy is intertwined with notions of statehood, and how legitimacy reaches beyond the state into supranational institutions and international law. Chapter I considers benefit-based, merit-based, and will-based theories of state legitimacy. Chapter II examines the relationship between expertise and legitimate political authority. Chapter III attempts to make sense of John Rawls’s account of legitimacy in his later work. Chapter IV observes that state sovereignty persists, since no alternative is available, and that the success of the assortment of international organizations that challenge state sovereignty depends on their ability to attract loyalty. Chapter V argues that, to be complete, an account of a state’s legitimacy must evaluate not only its powers and its institutions, but also its officials. Chapter VI covers the rule of law and state legitimacy. Chapter VII considers the legitimation of the nation state in a post-national world. Chapter VIII contends that legitimacy beyond the state should be understood as a subject-conferred attribute of specific norms that generates no more than a duty to respect those norms. Chapter IX is a reply to critics of attempts to ground the legitimacy of suprastate institutions in constitutionalism. Chapter X examines Joseph Raz’s perfectionist liberalism. Chapter XI attempts to bring some order to debates about the legitimacy of international courts.

Perspectives canadiennes de droit international public et privé relatives à la maîtrise du territoire

1991 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 29-116
Author(s):  
Gerald Goldstein
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Free Trade Agreement ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Effective Control ◽  
Territorial Disputes ◽  
Real Property ◽  
Full Account ◽  
Global Policy ◽  
Droit International

SummaryState sovereignty manifests itself through all the powers a state exercises over its territory: it is one of the basic components of sovereignty according to international law. Sovereign power involves controlling territory with a degree of efficiency sufficient to prove the existence of the state. But according to some, state sovereignty has now become less and less a matter of territorial control, and international law is now witnessing an erosion of the significance of territory. While the author admits the plausibility of this opinion when applied to states belonging to closely linked economic unions as the EEC, he challenges this statement when applied to Canada, even given the framework of the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement. In Part I, this article gives a full account of the Canadian positions dealing with legally valid acquisition of territories through effective control and other means. It points out how Canada has been coherently committed to protect its territorial sovereignty in all the border and territorial disputes in which it was and is still involved. It explores how this country deliberately also committed itself to effectively controlling its vast terrestrial, aerial, and maritime territories.From this perspective, the author exposes in Part II the rather protective Canadian legal attitude when dealing with private international interests in Canada: how foreign investors are selectively allowed to own, control, possess, or otherwise acquire an interest in any part of Canadian land or real property through specific substantial rules or conflict of law rules; how Canadian federal and provincial laws deal with expropriating foreign-owned property or with foreign judgments affecting the same. In the view of the author, all these territorialist features strongly convey the idea that Canada still attributes a prime role to securing close control over its territory within its global policy of sovereignty and independence.

scholarly journals Water security in the Canadian Prairies: science and management challenges

2013 ◽  
Vol 371 (2002) ◽  
pp. 20120409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Wheater ◽  
Patricia Gober
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Water Security ◽  
Western Canada ◽  
Deep Uncertainty ◽  
Canadian Prairies ◽  
Multiple Dimensions ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
Water Problems

In this paper, we discuss the multiple dimensions of water security and define a set of thematic challenges for science, policy and governance, based around cross-scale dynamics, complexity and uncertainty. A case study of the Saskatchewan River basin (SRB) in western Canada is presented, which encompasses many of the water-security challenges faced worldwide. A science agenda is defined based on the development of the SRB as a large-scale observatory to develop the underpinning science and social science needed to improve our understanding of water futures under societal and environmental change. We argue that non-stationarity poses profound challenges for existing science and that new integration of the natural sciences, engineering and social sciences is needed to address decision making under deep uncertainty. We suggest that vulnerability analysis can be combined with scenario-based modelling to address issues of water security and that knowledge translation should be coupled with place-based modelling, adaptive governance and social learning to address the complexity uncertainty and scale dynamics of contemporary water problems.

International Water Law in Central Asia: The Nature of Substantive Norms and what Flows from It

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dinara ZIGANSHINA
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Water Security ◽  
Aral Sea ◽  
Aral Sea Basin ◽  
Transboundary Waters ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
International Water Law ◽  
International Water ◽  
Reasonable Use

Water security issues arising from the Central Asian states’ heavy reliance on, and competition over, the shared waters of the Aral Sea Basin have attracted urgent political and academic discussion. However, any analysis of the role that international law plays in addressing these substantive complex problems remains incomplete and imprecise. This article sets the stage for a deeper understanding of international law and of its potential operation in the context of the transboundary waters in the Aral Sea Basin. It seeks to explore the substantive norms operating in the field, namely, the rule of equitable and reasonable use, the no-harm rule, and obligations relating to environmental protection, with a view to understanding how these substantive norms work and ascertaining what conduct is required of the states with respect to their shared watercourses.

Rethinking sovereignty in international fiscal policy

2011 ◽  
Vol 37 (5) ◽  
pp. 2107-2120 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER DIETSCH
Keyword(s):  
Fiscal Policy ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
International Law ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Modern State ◽  
State Governments

AbstractThe power to raise taxes is a sine qua non for the functioning of the modern state. Governments frequently defend the independence of their fiscal policy as a matter of sovereignty. This article challenges this defence by demonstrating that it relies on an antiquated conception of sovereignty. Instead of the Westphalian sovereignty centred on non-intervention that has long dominated relations between states, today's fiscal interdependence calls for a conception of sovereignty that assigns duties as well as rights to states. While such a circumscribed conception of sovereignty has emerged in other areas of international law in recent years, it has yet to be extended to fiscal questions. Here, these duties arguably include obligations of transparency, of respect for the fiscal choices of other countries, and of distributive justice. The resulting conception of sovereignty is one that emphasises its instrumental as well as its conditional character. Neither state sovereignty nor self-determination is an end in itself, but a means to promoting individual well-being. It is conditional in the sense that if states do not live up to their fiscal obligations towards other states, their claims to autonomy are void.

Concepts of State, Sovereignty and International Law

1929 ◽  
Vol 38 (8) ◽  
pp. 1159
Author(s):  
Ambassador von Prittwitz ◽  
Johannes Mattern
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
State Sovereignty
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