Federal Rivers – Managing Water in Multi-Layered Political Systems by Dustin Garrick, George R. M. Anderson, Daniel Connell and Jamie Pittock. 2014, hardback, 384 pages, Edwin Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK. ISBN: 978-1-78195-504-8

Abstract

As this book clearly illustrates, the regulation of rivers within federations presents a set of unique challenges. Federalism, with government power shared between the national government and provincial (sub-national) governments, potentially adds a layer of complexity to water resource management. Where rivers flow through more than one province, tensions can develop between the national and provincial governments, and also between two or more provincial governments, as to the way in which those waters are regulated. This edited collection is the product of a workshop hosted at the University of Oxford in 2012, bringing together experts on water policy and reform from the Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe and Australia. The chapters in this collection provide a series of case studies examining water resource management in ten countries, which provides breadth to this collection. Each chapter then provides great depth and detail of the water policy and political system of the country that it examines. The book is divided into 21 chapters. The 17 case studies, which include basin-specific studies and country-wide studies, are bookended by two introductory chapters and two concluding chapters. These opening and concluding chapters identify some of the themes that flow through the case studies. In doing so, these chapters demonstrate that some of the challenges faced in regulating rivers in countries with a federal system of government are common across a number of countries. However, each federation, with its own constitutional framework, will also have its own unique challenges. In Chapter 1 the editors (D. Garrick, G. Anderson, D. Connell and J. Pittock) provide an overview of water governance challenges in federal systems and identify two themes that permeate the case studies: first, ‘the increasing need for integrated water resource management and water security in federal rivers’; second, ‘the capacity of federal water management arrangements to respond …