This thesis attempted to examine the enabling conditions of existing South African water law and its implementation by the appropriate authorities. The Cape Town Municipality's management over water supply and services is included in this study. The research attempted to expose any shortcomings that might be prevalent in the new water law. The water allocation mechanism of the transformed water legislation and the water demands within various competing water user sectors of the community, such as those pertaining to agriculture and industry, was also explored.

Achieving global water sustainability through a resilient international legal architecture presents one of the most pressing challenges within our resource finite planet. A staggering 42 percent of the total land area of the earth is covered by transboundary river basins, where more than 40 percent of the global population lives and depends on the ecosystem services of the 286 transboundary river basins and 200 transboundary aquifers stretching across the political boundaries of 151 countries. There is already evidence of water resources becoming a source of conflict in many regions and constraining a whole myriad of securities – climate, human, environmental, food, economic, energy – on various levels of society. The international legal architecture to manage this critical natural resource is the overarching area of inquiry in this thesis, and requires improvement to address current and predicted future transboundary water challenges, conflicts and strengthen cooperation. Despite the establishment of around 690 river basin treaties, many of these agreements completely miss or provide unclear provisions on principles and rules of international water law. Until recently there was no legally binding global treaty on transboundary watercourses and customary international law has provided the default rules in the absence of agreements and facilitated the re-interpretation of older agreements in accordance with the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Now there are potentially two global treaties, with the recent entry into force of the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention and the global opening up of the 1992 pan-regional United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Water Convention, to all UN member states. There is also a plethora of other international environmental legal and non-legally binding instruments, indirectly addressing international law relevant to transboundary watercourses and freshwater ecosystems. Legal regimes for the protection and use of international river basins cannot be interpreted and applied in isolation from other relevant norms of international environmental and general international law. This thesis seeks to understand the rising role and contribution of regional approaches relevant to international law on transboundary watercourses and freshwater ecosystems. More specifically it explores the contribution of the UNECE Water Convention and other relevant UNECE environmental instruments as a structurally distinctive ‘regime’. This thesis introduces a novel conception of a broader ‘UNECE water regime’ which includes the Water Convention, the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice (Aarhus Convention), the Convention on Transboundary Environmental Impact Assessment (Espoo Convention), the Convention on the Transboundary Effects of Industrial Accidents, as well as their protocols and non-binding instruments. This research demonstrates how these instruments and their institutions can be interpreted and understood to form a common framework of rules, principles and approaches which fills critical gaps in basin treaties, and collectively contributes to the clarification and development of international law on transboundary watercourses and freshwater ecosystems. This analysis also explores institutional interaction and coordination between and beyond the UNECE pan-regional agreements, as well as the role of soft law or non-binding instruments, and state and non-state actors in the regime. This thesis seeks to contribute to a more coherent understanding of the relationship between the UNECE water regime, international water law, international environmental law and general international law. The UNECE water regime has contributed to clarifying many of the cornerstone rules and principles of international water law and it is argued that the UNECE water regime is lex specialis, which can and mostly does go beyond the UN Watercourses Convention. The UNECE water regime has also arguably spearheaded a paradigm shift in international water law, which sees it moving beyond its historically predominant focus on issues of transboundary impact and utilisation towards a stronger ecosystem orientated approach to environmental protection and equitable use of transboundary river basins. This research identifies key elements of an ecosystem approach, drawing from international environmental and international water law and demonstrates how the ecosystem approach, including ecosystem services, as supported by the UNECE water regime, affects interpretation of international water law towards enhancing ecosystem protection and intra-state equity. This research also explores how the UNECE regime goes beyond what exists elsewhere in international law and international water law on public participation and access to justice. Finally, this research examines the contribution of the UNECE regime vis-à-vis international and European Union water law, across the spectrum of pan-European river basins, especially focusing on the Danube, Sava and Western Bug basins. The UNECE water regime is the most evolved pan-regional regime of its kind, providing ambitious detailed standards and clarification of rules and principles relevant to transboundary watercourses and freshwater ecosystems. It also provides a valuable model of institutional cooperation, progressively engaging state and non-state actors. As this regime takes steps towards realising its global ambition, with almost all instruments now open to all UN member states, and the recent accession by Chad to the Water Convention, this analysis demonstrates why this is predominantly a positive endeavour but also highlights potential challenges and hurdles. This research thus explores the implications and benefits of the UNECE’s rising role in strengthening the international legal architecture to protect the world’s fragile transboundary watercourses and freshwater ecosystems.

As drought becomes more common in California, effective water management has become one of the state’s most critical policy issues. During the drought of 2011-2017 specifically, the state government faced significant legal and political barriers in its attempts to implement sweeping, statewide drought management policy. First, the California water rights system prevents the state from legally curtailing the water diversions of senior water rights holders. Because of this, the State Water Resources Control Board has been engaged in ongoing litigation with senior and junior water rights holders alike over their attempts to curtail water rights in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta during the drought. Second, the Board faced local resistance to the 25% conservation order mandated in Executive Order B-29-15 due to concerns over state intervention in local issues and a disregard for the doctrine of first in time, first in right. Finally, the state passed the sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014 in order to address California’s overused and under-regulated groundwater supply. While a step in the right direction, the implementation timeline of this policy is not urgent enough to protect aquifers from overdraft and saltwater intrusion. These barriers all made developing and implementing effective drought policy extremely difficult. While Executive Order B-29-15 and the curtailment notices were not meant to be permanent solutions to the drought problem, they now need to be replaced with a comprehensive package of legislation that addresses a myriad of competing interests and environmental realities.

University of Macau / Faculty of Law

South African commercial plantations occupy an estimated 1.5 million hectares of the country and as the demands for timber products increase, this area is expected to increase. However, further expansion is limited, not only by the suitability of land, but also by the pressures from other water users. As a result the need has arisen for simulation models that can aid decisionmakers and planners in their evaluation of the water requirements of forestry versus competing land uses at different spatial scales. Different models exist to perform such tasks and range from simple empirical models to more complex physically-based models. The policies of the National Water Act (1998) relating to forestry serve to highlight the requirements of a model used for the assessment of afforestation impacts and these are discussed in this document. There is a perception that physically-based distributed models are best suited for estimation of afforestation impacts on a catchment's water yield since their physical basis allows for extrapolation to different catchments without calibration. Furthermore, it is often stated that the model parameters have physical meaning and can therefore be estimated from measurable variables. In this regard, a review of physically-based modelling approaches and a comparison of two such hydrological models forms the main focus of this dissertation. The models evaluated were the South African ACRU model and the Australian topography-based Macaque model. The primary objective of this research was to determine whether topography-based modelling (Macaque model) provides an improved simulation of water yield from forested catchments, particularly during the low flow period, compared to a physically-based model (ACRU model) that does not explicitly represent lateral sub-surface flow. A secondary objective was the evaluation of the suitability of these models for application in South Africa. Through a comparison of the two models' structures, the application of the models on two South African catchments and an analysis of the simulation results obtained, an assessment of the different physically-based modelling approaches was made. The strengths and shortcomings of the two models were determined and the following conclusions were drawn regarding the suitability of these modelling approaches for applications on forested catchments in South Africa:• The ACRU model structure was more suited to predictive modelling on operational catchments, whilst the more complex Macaque model's greatest limitation for application in South Africa was its high input requirements which could not be supported by the available data. • Despite data limitations and uncertainty, the Macaque model's topography-based representation of runoff processes resulted in improved low flow simulations compared to the results from the ACRU simulations, indicating that there are benefits associated with a topographically-based modelling approach. • The Macaque model's link to the Geographic Information System, Tarsier, provided an efficient means to configure the model, input spatial data and view output data. However, it was found that the ACRU model was more flexible in terms of being able to accurately represent the spatial and temporal variations of input parameters. Based on these findings, recommendations for future research include the. verification of internal processes of both the ACRU and Macaque models. This would require the combined measurement of both catchment streamflow and processes such as evapotranspiration. For the Macaque model to be verified more comprehensively and for its application in operational catchments it will be necessary to improve the representation of spatial and temporal changes in precipitation and vegetation parameters for South African conditions. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal ,Pietermaritzburg, 2002.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.

South Africa is a dry, water-stressed country which faces many water management challenges. Some of these challenges are unique to South African freshwater resources management while others are conventional water management problems. In light of these water management problems it is important that South Africa manages its scarce water resources effectively and efficiently. Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is regarded internationally as the best way to manage freshwater resources as it provides for the holistic management of land and water while taking into account various other factors such as sustainable development. Although there have been some difficulties in finding international consensus on the precise meaning of IWRM there are a number of defining aspects which are common place in the development of this concept. From an analysis of environmental law and policy relating to freshwater resources it is clear that South Africa has included many of these aspects of IWRM into its own freshwater resources management. In fact there are few short comings in the provision for IWRM under South African law and policy. South Africa’s problems, however, lie in the implementation of its provision for IWRM. By looking at various reports, statistics, strategies, commentaries and other documents relating to the status of freshwater resources it becomes clear that although progress has been made in realising implementation of South Africa’s water law since 1994 there are still many core areas of freshwater management which are far from being implemented. If South Africa is to achieve true IWRM it will need to address its implementation short comings. / Thesis (LL.M.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

In this minithesis I have investigated overlapping mandates as a source of management failure in water management in South Africa in general and Eerste River Catchment in particular. I analysed major legislation which deals with water management to find out how duties and responsibilities are apportioned in the various pieces of legislation. I also undertook an exercise of evaluating roles and responsibilities played by various organs of state in water management from national government, Provincial Government of the Western Cape through to local government, in this case the Municipality of Stellenbosch and the City of Cape Town. It emerged that there were a number of areas of overlap, ambiguously defined mandates, conflict and that these were impeding on decision making in water management. In order to test the framework built above, I then applied it in the Plankenbrug River, a tributary of the Eerste River. Through analysis of newspaper clippings over a period of 4 years I was able to reconstruct conflict over ill-defined mandates in the various aspects of the management of the catchment which showed that<br /> there were differences in roles of the different state organs operating in the catchment. Water management conflict emanated from lack of congruence in the various legislation and differences in the interpretation of legislation. The various state organs seem to be aware of the constitutional duty of cooperative government that engenders state organs to work co-operatively in order to meet their developmental mandates. It seems however that the state organs were merely interested to be seen to be in conformity with this duty more than actually solving the issue as this was seen as something to be tackled at a higher level.

This thesis attempted to examine the enabling conditions of existing South African water law and its implementation by the appropriate authorities. The Cape Town Municipality's management over water supply and services is included in this study. The research attempted to expose any shortcomings that might be prevalent in the new water law. The water allocation mechanism of the transformed water legislation and the water demands within various competing water user sectors of the community, such as those pertaining to agriculture and industry, was also explored.

19 pp. / "Arizona Watershed Stewardship Guide: Geology, Geomorphology and Soils Arizona Watershed Stewardship Guide: Watershed Ecology Arizona Watershed Stewardship Guide: Working Together Arizona Watershed Stewardship Guide: Hydrology Arizona Watershed Stewardship Guide: Fire in Watersheds Arizona Watershed Stewardship Guide: Climate / Arizona Watershed Stewardship Guide was created to help individuals and groups build a mutual foundation of basic knowledge about watersheds in Arizona. It is intended to help Arizonans understand and be good stewards of their watersheds. The guide was designed to compliment the mission of Arizona Master Watershed Steward program to educate and train citizens across the state of Arizona to serve as volunteers in the monitoring, restoration, conservation, and protection of their water and watersheds. The guide consists of 10 self-contained modules which teach about one or more important aspects of watershed science or management.