Ground water is the most extracted natural resource in the world. It provides more than half of humanity’s freshwater for everyday uses such as drinking, cooking, and hygiene, as well as twenty percent of irrigated agriculture. Despite this great reliance, the legal and regulatory attention to ground water resources has long been secondary to surface water, especially among legislatures and policymakers. This is particularly evident in the international arena where, today, only one international agreement directly addresses the management of a transboundary aquifer (in contrast, hundreds of treaties govern transboundary rivers and lakes).

The deficiency in international law is due, in large part, to various complexities encountered in developing international law for transboundary ground water resources.  Such complexities include lack of understanding among legislatures and policy-makers about ground water resources, lack of understanding of ground water scientists about the legislative and treaty-making process, and the difficulty of translating between scientific and legal concepts and terms.

Recently, the United Nations International Law Commission (UNILC) embarked on an effort to address this shortcoming and to bridge the gap between science and the law with a goal of developing international legal principles applicable to transboundary ground water resources.  In August 2006, the UNILC accepted on first reading its Draft Articles on Transboundary Aquifers.

The presentation will begin with a brief discussion of global transboundary ground water resources, water scarcity, and water conflicts and will consider existing sources of international law applicable to transboundary aquifers. The discussion will then turn to the work of the UNILC in its effort to identify and articulate the international law applicable to transboundary ground water resources. Particular attention will be given to the complexities identified in the development of international ground water law.