Digital Commons Network^™

The Role Of Data Sharing In Transboundary Waterways: The Case Of The Helmand River Basin, Najibullah Loodin, Gabriel Eckstein, Vijay P. Singh, Rosario Sanchez

Faculty Scholarship

While data and information exchanges theoretically play an effective role in the decision-making process of a shared watercourse, in practice, there are several challenges that prevent riparians from sharing data in an effective and cooperative manner. This chapter seeks to assess why the riparian nations of the Helmand River have failed to adopt an effective data exchange mechanism although both nations signed an internationally recognized bilateral water treaty in 1973. Applying a mixed study approach, the study draws on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to interpret the main obstacles of data sharing between Afghanistan, the upstream state, and Iran, …

Characterizing Legal Implications For The Use Of Transboundary Aquifers, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

Groundwater resources that traverse political boundaries are becoming 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 awareness, questions pertaining to responsibility and liability are now being raised in relation to the use, …

Transboundary Aquifers, Raya Marina Stephan, Alice Aureli, Aurélien Dumont, Annukka Lipponen, Sarah Tiefenauer-Linardon, Christina Fraser, Alfonso Rivera, Shammy Puri, Stefano Burchi, Gabriel Eckstein, Christian Brethaut, Ziad Khayat, Karen Villholth, Lesha Witmer, Renee Martin-Nagle, Anita Milman, Francesco Sindico, James Dalton

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter gives an overview of the status of transboundary aquifers and the cooperation related to shared groundwater resources, highlighting the complexity of the assessment, analysis and management of these systems. It summarizes the main challenges regarding transboundary aquifers and the need for more comprehensive and integrated management, which would include technical, legal and organizational aspects as well as training and cooperation.

Environmental Law, Disrupted By Covid-19, Rebecca Bratspies, Vanessa Casado-Pérez, Robin Kundis Craig, Lissa Griffin, Keith Hirokawa, Sarah Krakoff, Katrina Kuh, Jessica Owley, Melissa Powers, Shannon Roesler, Jonathan Rosenbloom, J.B. Ruhl, Erin Ryan, David Takacs

Faculty Scholarship

As we were in the final phases of editing a book on disruption in environmental law, a pandemic swept across the world disrupting daily life and the functioning of society to an extent unprecedented in living memory. The novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 was identified in China in late 2019 and by late February 2020, it had spread to every continent except Antarctica; as of April, 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that over 148 million people had been infected worldwide with over 3 million deaths. Scientists and public health experts have raced to understand the virus—how is it …

International Law For Transboundary Aquifers: A Challenge For Our Times, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

Quarrels between states sharing a transboundary aquifer (TBA) have been relatively minor in comparison with the more boisterous disputes seen in many of the world's shared river basins. Yet, transboundary groundwater can easily serve as the basis for cross-border disagreements. Twice as many TBAs and shared groundwater bodies have been identified globally as compared to transboundary rivers and lakes, and the volume of accessible groundwater exceeds all surface waters by a factor of one hundred. Yet, the number of treaties in force for TBAs is miniscule in comparison with those for transboundary rivers and lakes. Moreover, dozens of nations exploit …

Introduction To The Symposium On Interstate Disputes Over Water Rights, Gabriel Eckstein, James Salzman

Faculty Scholarship

Disagreements over the management and allocation of transboundary freshwater resources have become increasingly prominent in international relations. Serious diplomatic tensions surround management of the Jordan, Mekong, Nile, Rio Grande, Silala, Syr Darya and Amu Darya, and Tigris and Euphrates rivers, to name just the most prominent examples among the world’s more than three hundred shared watercourses. Nor is there any reason to think tensions will subside in the future. Whether disagreements over shared freshwater resources will continue to be resolved peacefully will depend, in part, on the viability, durability, and flexibility of international law to prevent and resolve such disputes. …

Water Diplomacy And Shared Resources Along The United States-Mexico Border, Maria Elena Giner, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

The United States and Mexico are geographic neighbors with high economic asymmetry, but also a shared history and intense social, cultural, economic, and security relations. Over 15 million people reside along the U.S.-Mexico border and share an environment that includes many watersheds and air basins transcending political boundaries. Pollution impacts on both sides of the border have required a coordinated response at the local, state, and federal level.

At the federal level, a joint institution was created in in 1889 as the International Boundary Commission and later renamed the International Boundary and Water Commission to provide binational solutions to issues …

Liquid Business, Vanessa Casado-Pérez

Faculty Scholarship

Water is scarcer due to climate change and in higher demand due to population growth than ever before. As if these stressors were not concerning enough, corporate investors are participating in water markets in ways that sidestep U.S. water law doctrine’s aims of preventing speculation and assuring that the holders of water rights internalize any externalities associated with changes in their rights. The operation of these new players in the shadow of traditional water law is producing elements of inefficiency and unfairness in the allocation of water rights. Resisting the polar calls for unfettered water markets, or, contrarily, the complete …

Framework Of Surface And Ground Water In Oklahoma And Texas: Perspectives For Oil And Gas Development, Jessica Foster, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

Chapter Extract:

Advancements in drilling techniques have broadened possibilities for producing hydrocarbons; but the innovations of unconventional drilling have exacerbated existing threats that the oil and gas industry have posed to water resources while creating new challenges. In today's industry, conventional methods of drilling for free-flowing crude oil are playing a secondary role to unconventional oil and gas production capable of bringing hydrocarbons trapped in tight or previously inaccessible geologic formations. Compared to conventional production, unconventional methods use much greater amounts of water in chemical-laden processes that can impact the availability and purity of freshwater resources in concentrated localities where …

Missing Water Markets: A Cautionary Tale Of Governmental Failure, Vanessa Casado-Pérez

Faculty Scholarship

California is facing a water crisis. Water is managed through a variety of mechanisms, including government administration and market tools. This Article argues for a regulated market-based solution. When it comes to water markets, the invisible hand needs help from the visible hand of government to prove effective. Administrative systems and markets are usually portrayed in opposition to each other, as mutually exclusive solutions. Water market advocates suggest government's role is minimal. However, as this Article identifies, to establish and maintain a functioning water market, government needs to play a variety of roles. These include the uncontested role of defining …

Cooperative Transboundary Mechanism, Alena Drieschova, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

Management of transboundary waters in increasingly becoming more challenging, and climate change is likely to exacerbate these pressures. Not least because climate change is a global issue, adaptation will require an international response. This book aims to identify issues, both theoretical and practical, that States face in establishing cooperative transboundary mechanisms to effectively adapt water management to climate change. Furthermore, it will address complex legal hurdles that existing transboundary water institutions face when attempting to adapt existing mechanisms to function in a changing climate. It will also provide an overview of best practices in transboundary adaptive water governance thus far, …

The Latest Red River Rivalry: The Supreme Court's Recent Decision Regarding The Red River Compact, Luke W. Davis, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

On June 13, 2013, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in a “Red River Rivalry” with much greater implications than the annual football game. In Tarrant Regional Water District v. Herrmann, the court sided entirely with Oklahoma in that state’s dispute with Texas over the allocation of Red River water. This decision will have considerable impact on Texas’ ability to meet its ever-growing water needs. Moreover, the decision could be consequential for other interstate water compacts and the states relying on the rivers and tributaries governed by those agreements.

Endangered Species In The Oil Patch: Challenges And Opportunities For The Oil And Gas Industry, Gabriel Eckstein, Jesse Snyder

Faculty Scholarship

Tension among competing interests is nothing new in environmental law. Even among the most tenacious adversaries, the ability to find common ground can serve as an impetus to further the aims of both industry and environmental proponents. Broadly speaking, advocates of the oil and gas industry prefer few restraints, if any, on exploration, development, and production. Comparatively, champions of biological and ecological preservation favor regulatory protections to conserve these interests. Cutting across these often disparate objectives, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) presents a not-so-obvious opportunity for both sides to receive a share of the pie through cooperation and forward planning. …

Alternative Strategies For Addressing The Presence And Effects Of Pharmaceutical And Personal Care Products In Fresh Water Resources, Gabriel Eckstein, George William Sherk

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, new information has arisen to challenge this assumption. Chemicals from a wide variety of pharmaceutical and personal care products ("PPCPs"), their byproducts and endocrine disrupting compounds ("EDCs") have received growing attention from the water treatment and wastewater treatment community because of the ability of PPCPs to persist, or only partially degrade, in water and during wastewater treatment.

Several federal agencies, including the EnvironmentAl Protection Agency ("EPA"), the Food and Drug Administration ("FDA"), the U.S. Department of Agriculture ("USDA"), the U.S. Geological Survey ("USGS"), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ("CDC"), have the potential to be …

Alternative Strategies For Managing Pharmaceutical And Personal Care Products In Water Resources, Gabriel Eckstein, George William Sherk

Faculty Scholarship

In recent decades, concern has grown over the presence of pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) in water. This concern stems from the possibility that the presence of PPCPs in water supplies may pose a threat to both human and environmental health. Such threats may be both direct (e.g., exposure to endocrine disrupting compounds) and indirect (e.g., emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria). The water treatment and wastewater treatment community has been especially concerned over PPCPs because of PPCPs ubiquitous nature and their ability to persist or only partially degrade in water and during wastewater treatment. Studies done over the past …

Scientific, Legal, And Ethical Foundations For Texas Water Law, Gabriel Eckstein, Amy Hardberger

Faculty Scholarship

Water law is the field of law concerned with the ownership, control, and use of water resources, both surface and subsurface. Although most closely related to property law, recent developments in other legal fields, especially in environmental law, have heavily influenced the interpretation, application, and development of water law. As a result, water law today encompasses a broad perspective and often takes into account individual and community rights, environmental issues, commerce and economics, and other societal and legal concerns.

Significantly, modern water law is also an interdisciplinary practice. In light of the continuously expanding body of knowledge of the hydrologic …

Water Scarcity, Conflict, And Security In A Climate Change World: Challenges And Opportunities For International Law And Policy, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

Although climate change is expected to have major consequences that affect the global environment in its broadest sense, one of the earliest and most direct impacts will be on Earth’s fresh water systems. While some regions will experience increased precipitation, others will suffer serious scarcity. Among others, consequences are likely to include severe flooding, extreme droughts, and meandering border-rivers. This, in turn, will affect human migration patterns, population growths, agricultural activities, economic development, and the environment. This article explores the impact that climate change will have on regional and global freshwater resources and the resulting legal and policy implications that …

Common Grounds, Common Waters: Towards A Water Ethic - Roundtable Discussion, Gabriel Eckstein, Irene Klaver

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this roundtable discussion is to continue the dialogue but in a more informal setting, and to allow people to develop some of the ideas and concepts that they started earlier but could not finish because of the time limits.

It is also to get the audience and the panelists to ask questions of each other and to participate in more of a dialogue. To start this discussion I want to raise, at least to the panelists, this issue of wants versus needs, and I am actually going to add one more-versus rights-because I thought that was very …

Examples Of The Political Character Of International Water Law, Gabriel E. Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

It is widely known that over a billion people lack access to potable water, and well over twice that number are without adequate sanitation'-the latter situation often being related to the former. It has been calculated that every eight seconds a child dies of water-related causes-a stunning statistic and an absolutely unacceptable state of affairs.

While much has been made of the prospect of global water shortages, what is perhaps not so well known is that most of the world's fresh water is shared by two or more states. There are more than 260 international drainage basins, which account for …

El Precia Del Agua [Pricing Water], Carlos Gómez-Ligüerre, Vanessa Casado-Pérez, Ignacio Marín-García

Faculty Scholarship

En España, como en otros muchos países, el agua es un recurso escaso que se asigna ineficientemente. El Estado es su propietario y la asigna a precios políticos e inadecuados. Mientras que la agricultura absorbe dos tercios de este preciado bien, los hogares y la industria consumen sólo el 18 y el 13 % respectivamente. Este trabajo propone la creación de un mercado de derechos sobre el agua controlado por una agencia estatal, pues los costes de transacción son tan elevados que el resultado alcanzado a través de la negociación libre entre las partes no sería eficiente.

In Spain, as …

State Practice In The Management And Allocation Of Transboundary Ground Water Resources In North America, Gabriel Eckstein, Amy Hardberger

Faculty Scholarship

Throughout the world, international and state political boundaries divide ground water resources into politically convenient jurisdictions. Subsurface water, however, does not recognize such borders and flows freely without regard to overlying politics. This disregard for the political dimension, coupled with the growing global importance of fresh water, has the potential for aggravating disputes and conflicts over the use, allocation, and preservation of such resources. To date, widely accepted norms of international law applicable to transboundary aquifers have yet to emerge. However, local and regional agreements, including both formal and unofficial arrangements, suggest the emergence of state practice that should be …

Commentary On The U.N. International Law Commission's Draft Articles On The Law Of Transboundary Aquifers, Gabriel E. Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

Ground water is the most extracted natural resource in the world. It provides more than half of humanity's freshwater for everyday uses such as drinking, cooking, and hygiene, as well as twenty percent of irrigated agriculture. Despite our increasing reliance, ground water resources have long been the neglected stepchild of international water law; regulation and management of and information about ground water resources are sorely lacking, especially in the international context. Presently, there is no international agreement squarely addressing ground water resources that traverse an international boundary. Moreover, there is only one treaty in the entire world pertaining to the …

Precious, Worthless, Or Immeasurable: The Value And Ethic Of Water, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

This Article introduces and briefly explores some of the topics related to the value and ethics of water that were considered at the symposium, Precious, Worthless, or Immeasurable: The Value and Ethic of Water, which took place November 2-4, 2006, at the Texas Tech University School of Law. The purpose of the Symposium was to consider how this precious liquid is valued, assessed, and perceived with regard to law and regulations, economics and commerce, people and communities, culture and religion, and others aspects of society that are impacted by water. While far from a comprehensive analysis of the subject matter, …

A Hydrogeological Perspective Of The Status Of Ground Water Resources Under The Un Watercourse Convention, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

When the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses in 1997, it took a decisive step in recognizing the important role that transboundary ground water resources play in human progress and development. In so doing, it also acknowledged the need to establish principles of law governing this "invisible" but valuable natural resource. Transboundary ground water historically has been neglected in treaties, ignored in projects with international implications, and cursorily misunderstood in much of legal discourse.

While the Convention provides substantial clarification on the status of ground water under international law, it also leaves considerable …

Protecting A Hidden Treasure: The U.N. International Law Commission And The International Law Of Transboundary Ground Water Resources, Gabriel E. Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

Ground water is the most extracted natural resource in the world. It provides more than half of humanity's freshwater for everyday uses such as drinking, cooking, and hygiene, as well as twenty percent of irrigated agriculture. Given the world's considerable reliance on this precious resource, it is reasonable to assume that international attention to, and especially legal consideration of, ground water would be substantial. Nothing is further from the truth. Despite the growing dependence, legal and regulatory attention to ground water resources have long been secondary to surface water, especially among legislatures and policymakers and above all in the international …

A Hydrogeological Approach To Transboundary Ground Water Resources And International Law, Gabriel Eckstein, Yoram Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

Ground water resources have long been the neglected stepchild of water law. While agreements focusing on transboundary rivers and lakes have been relatively common, there is a paucity of treaties and international norms squarely addressing shared ground water resources. As a result, the rules governing the use, management, and conservation of transboundary ground waters is unclear at best.

This dearth is, in large part, the result of a deficit of scientific understanding among legislators, policymakers, and the judiciary. This is evidenced in many international and domestic laws and policies that have little or no scientific underpinning. Accordingly, there is a …

Application Of International Water Law To Transboundary Groundwater Resources, And The Slovak-Hungarian Dispute Over Gabcikovo-Nagymaros, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

The growth in global population and economic development has resulted in tremendous pressures on existing sources of fresh water. Human water use over the past three centuries increased by a factor of thirty-five and is growing by four to eight percent annually. Coupled with recurring international disputes over water resources, poor water management, and the realization that water is an indispensable but finite resource, these trends have propelled the use and management of transboundary groundwater resources to the forefront of legal debate.

Until recently, matters relating to groundwater resources were relatively ignored in the context of international law applicable to …