Strengthening Rights Of Rivers By Applying The Lessons Learned From The Merits And Weaknesses Of Traditional Legal Frameworks

The global water crisis has had drastic repurcussions upon humans and the environment. The traditional legal frameworks that have emerged to tackle with it have prioritized the water needs of humans and mandated the allocation of water to the environment only to the extent necessary for meeting the exigencies of humans. The anthropocentric nature of such frameworks has restricted the protection that can be extended to the environment that has not been considered as an entity with intrinsic value. As a result, a number of states granted rights to rivers as part of the broaders rights of nature movement in the early 21st century. This trend has been guided by an ecocentric ethical orientation whereby humans have equal moral value as all of the living and non-living beings. In addition, many scholars have aptly framed it as the extension of human rights to nature. That being said, traditional legal frameworks, including human rights, have never been used as a yardstick to evaluate the merits and failures of the portrayal of rivers as right holders. Against this background, Chapter I presents the global water crisis as one of the gravest risks faced by the environment and humans and illustrates its causes and consequences. Chapter II studies the traditional legal frameworks that have emerged to ensure humans’ access to adequate water, namely water and environmental law as well as the rights to water, sanitation and environment. Chapter III demonstrates the extent to which the latter frameworks are anthropocentric. Chapter IV studies the rights of rivers as part of the broader rights of nature movement. Chapters V and VI focus on the enforcement of the traditional legal frameworks and rights of rivers. Lastly, Chapter VII tackles with a number of overarching themes with the purpose of applying the lessons learned from the development and implementation of the traditional legal frameworks to rights of rivers, namely the adoption of a binding instrument recognizing rights of nature and rivers modelled upon human rights treaties, evaluation of the rights of nature and rivers from the standpoint of theories formulated to prevent human rights inflation, the convergence of the business and human rights and rights of nature movement and assessment of bilateral investment treaties as obstacles against the effective enforcement of rights of rivers.