Property in Water?

This chapter explores the regulatory and relational implications of classifying water as property. It explores the co-constitutive nature of the way we classify water and the way that we use property to regulate our relationship with it. The intersection between these two issues confronts us with the challenge of how best to understand and recognise the social, cultural, environmental, spiritual and economic values of water, and how to protect, promote and balance these values through different forms of property in water. The chapter will introduce the reader to these questions and provide an overview of key debates that exist in the literature, including long-standing debates around the appropriate balance between equity and efficiency, and the role of markets, commodification and privatisation, in addition to emerging debates around the legal personhood of rivers and the protection of Indigenous water values.