In a short space of time, the right to water has emerged from relative obscurity to claim a prominent place in human rights theory and practice. This book explores this rise descriptively and prescriptively. It analyses the recognition, use and partly impact, of the right to water in international and comparative law, civil society mobilisation and public policy. It also scrutinises the normative implications of the right to water with a focus on challenges and puzzles it creates for law and policymaking. These questions are explored globally and comparatively within different dynamics of the sector - water allocation, water access and urban and rural water reform - and in conjunction with the right to sanitation. This multi-disciplinary volume reveals the diverse ways in which the right to water has been adopted, but also its limitations when faced with the realities of political economy, political ecology and partly, traditional legal thought.

Malcolm Langford is an Associate Professor at Universitetet i Oslo and Co-Director of the Centre on Law and Social Transformation, Universiteit i Bergen and Chr. Michelsen Institute, Norway. He has published widely on human rights, constitutionalism and development in multiple disciplines. He has served as an advisor to various UN bodies, governments and NGOs and was the founding director of the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions Right to Water Programme (2002–6). He is currently a Book Series Editor for Cambridge University Press and Co-Director of the Global School on Socio-Economic Rights. Anna F. S. Russell has published widely in the fields of public international law and international development. She is a former supervising attorney at the Harvard University Human Rights Program and Louwes fellow and lecturer at the University of Oxford. Her visiting fellowships include the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, the University of Cape Town and currently, the University of Oxford Law Faculty. She has a doctorate in international law from the University of Oxford and is a barrister and solicitor with the Law Society of Upper Canada. Having worked extensively in Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe, she advises governments and international organisations on global governance, conflict, security and justice.