The challenges for the twenty-first century: A critical approach

Abstract

With a history of about 5,000 years, water law and water governance have only just arrived on the global agenda. During these centuries, there have been incremental developments in governance processes from the local to the global level. Unlike other fields of resource governance, water is a field with a rich density of governance efforts, closely linked to the evolution of religion, culture, history, geography, and economy in different parts of the world, often expressed in legal terms. Against this background, this chapter sums up the key historic trends that have influenced water law through history, identifies major present day characteristics and goes on to review challenges for the twenty-first century. © 2009 Springer Netherlands.