The Centre for Policy Research is hosting a talk on international law relating to watercourses by Professor Philippe Cullet, a Senior Visiting Fellow at CPR and Professor of International and Environmental Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), on 23 September 2011. This seminar is part of the International Law Seminar Series organized by the Group of International Lawyers in Delhi (GUILD), anchored at CPR. Discussion Topic: Broadening international water law beyond watercourses: towards a new framework Speaker: Professor Philippe Cullet Discussion Topic: This seminar will examine the need for rethinking international water law. The starting point is the fact that international water law remains for all practical purposes the international law of watercourses. This is inappropriate in a context where the regulation of water in other fields (such as human rights and environmental law) has progressed significantly over the past couple of decades. The need for regulating a broader range of water uses has been recognised and a number of new principles and instruments have been developed at the international level in the past two decades. Yet, none of this has contributed to the development of a more comprehensive ‘international water law’, in large part because recent developments have taken place in the context of novel governance arrangements that for all practical purposes sideline traditional state-based institutions. These (very) soft law instruments appear relatively insignificant in formal legal terms at the international level. Yet, an analysis of the situation at the national level shows that the categories of international law are not reflected in the way states ‘implement’ these instruments. This can be contrasted with the fact that international law already includes different binding norms related to water in other fields such as environmental law whose implementation should in principle be the first priority of states at the national level. Speaker’s Biography: Philippe Cullet, a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, is Professor of International and Environmental Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies – University of London (SOAS). He is also a Founding Research Director and the Convenor of the International Environmental Law Research Centre (IELRC.org). Professor Cullet has published widely in the fields of environmental law, natural resources, human rights and the socio-economic aspects of intellectual property. His monographs include Water Law, Poverty and Development – Water Law Reforms in India (Oxford University Press, 2009), Intellectual Property and Sustainable Development (Butterworths, 2005) and Differential Treatment in International Environmental Law (Ashgate, 2003).
