"Everyone lives downstream – except the lawyers; they commute from Mars"
Professor Patricia Wouters , Director of the IHP-HELP Centre, is working to consign this apt verdict - her own words, the opening gambit of one of her own research papers - to the same "dustbin of history" made famous by Leon Trotsky all those years ago. On being named the Distinguished Scholar by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for the July 2011 IUCN Academy of Environmental Law Colloquium "Water and Law: Towards Sustainability" in South Africa, Professor Wouters said: "I am humbled by this recognition, which recognizes the collective efforts of our entire Dundee team. We have benefited with strong institutional support for our work, and our water law, policy and science interdisciplinary expertise at the Centre has made a real difference in providing innovative approaches to addressing local and international issues related to the management of shared fresh water resources. From the inception of our IHP-HELP Centre, our vision has been “promoting water for all”, through our mission to build a new generation of local water leaders based upon our research and our Water Law Water Leaders graduate teaching and training programme.”“Our Centre's research groups have been successful in attracting a significant of EU and other research projects, which continue to provide unique platforms to progress our research in ways that contribute to scholarship in the field, and also, to addressing on-the-ground water-resource management problems across Scotland and the world. Just a couple of examples include our work on the Tweed Basin in Scotland, in particular the Eddleston Water tributary, and our on-going EU LiveDiverse project, which seeks ways to improve livelihoods while at the same time protecting biodiversity - an excellent fit with this Colloquium which seeks to 'to secure a sustainable supply of water to meet the needs both of humans and of the natural environment, and to do this both for the present and for the future'.”Professor Wouters own research focuses on Water Security and has included expert advice for national and international organisations around the world. Pat has appointments to the Global Water Partnership Technical Experts Committee; sits on the International Advisory Board for the United Nations University Institute of Water Environment and Health; served on the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Water Security; and on the SUEZ Foresight Advisory Committee. Professor Wouters was recently invited to contribute to the work of the Inter-Action Council for its meetings related to global water security for World Water Day 2011. Retrofitting Treaties for Sustainability – What lessons for Rio+20?
Retrofitting for Sustainability is a concept taken from the Built Environment sector - it is recognised that, for developed countries at least, the vast majority of the housing in use in fifty years time has already been built. So, if we want to achieve a positive step change in environmental performance of the housing stock as a whole, the prime focus should be on improving the performance of existing stock - not on new housing. So, for water too, as the IUCN identifies, "there is no shortage of laws relating to water, including international treaties, regional agreements and national statutes. Similarly, there are treaties relating to biodiversity, climate change, pollution, and other related issue-areas, all of which have an impact on water sources. However, not all of these laws may be underpinned by a vision of sustainability. They may evince very different understandings of sustainability and the means to achieve it. They may be achieving very different levels of success.The aim of this Colloquium is to share understanding and experience in this field of research, not only, however, to document the challenge, but to gain insight into what needs to be done, what has been tried, what is working and what might work as regards water and the law. Papers presented could, therefore, reflect new contributions to water law and make recommendations as to how we could 'retrofit' our international treaties, our regional agreements, our national statutes, and indeed our essential philosophies as to how we might best conserve, and preserve where appropriate, this scarce resource on which we all depend."
For Pat this is exactly the sort of real world challenge that the IHP-HELP Centre is best placed to address -- "We strive for innovation and integration, with aspirations to contribute in three key ways: (i) through world-class scholarship; (ii) through addressing actual water-resource management challenges; (iii) through the effective dissemination and uptake of our research under the Water Leaders programme, with a strong focus on targeted Knowledge Exchange (see for example, our work with the WWF on securing international ratification of the UN Watercourse Convention 1997, see the Centre's UNWC Global Initiative project which is boosting global ratifications, which will, when in force, provide enhanced support for weak riparian states, and thus helping to make 'Water for All' far more of a reality for countless millions of disadvantage people around the world. “We have been privileged to work with some of the world’s leading scholars and practitioners in the field and continue to benefit from collaborations and partnerships across Scotland and the globe. We are honored to support the Scottish Government in its bid to host the 2015 World Water Forum, which would attract some 30K delegates to Scotland – who together could seek new solutions to address the world’s pressing and complex water problems. “
Retrofitting (international) treaties and (national) statutes for sustainability is something we can help with and provide leadership on, especially now in the run-up to Rio+20. Dundee has an important contribution to make-- watch this space".
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