Indigenous Water Rights in Law and Regulation

Elizabeth Jane Macpherson is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. She researches comparative Australasian and Latin American natural resources law and indigenous rights. Her legal practice experience includes representing claimants before New Zealand's Waitangi Tribunal and the Victorian State Government on Aboriginal Affairs.

'Macpherson's book is a work of outstanding scholarship, drawing on a deep understanding of water law and indigenous rights in Chile, Colombia, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand to develop a new model for understanding and articulating indigenous water rights in the context of indigenous peoples' enduring culture, law, and relationship to Country. Her book provides a much-needed reminder that water management in post-colonial societies exists within a history of indigenous dispossession, as well as an all-too-frequently continued exclusion from water allocation frameworks. … This book is a must-read for all scholars and practitioners of water law and water resource management - it challenges us to acknowledge the inequity and unsustainability of existing water law frameworks, and presents new and powerful lessons on how to deliver water justice for indigenous peoples, and the environment which sustains all of us.' Erin O'Donnell, University of Melbourne

• 1. Introduction; 2. Justifying indigenous water rights; 3. Regulating indigenous water rights; 4. The limited recognition of indigenous water rights in Australia; 5. Water rights for Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand; 6. Rivers as subjects and indigenous water rights in Colombia; 7. Recognising and allocating indigenous water rights in Chile; 8. Indigenous water rights in comparative law: jurisdiction and distribution; 9. Conclusion.