Objectivos:
The present project aims to produce an historical account of court cases concerning urban water issues, and to identify pivotal cases which meant changes in the regulatory framework. A typology of cases will be developed concerning: actors (municipalities, consumers, subcontractors...); issues at stake (quality, price, access...); regulations involved (challenged and proposed).<br /><br />The Portuguese case will be putted in a larger context by comparing it with other case studies using the same methodology sponsored by UNESCO.<br /><br />As a broader objective, the project aims to historicize water regulations in order to enhance governance of such a disputed common good.
State of the art:
<p>Analysing water conflicts helps to define the successive regulation frameworks and the main drivers for change. Each judgement contains the preamble, the position defended by each opposed party, and the justified judgement as well as the contractual clause and / or the rules on which the judge grounds his sentence. Each case illustrates the way rules are and should be implemented. The court case is thus an invaluable object for everyone interested in the evolution of the ways society organizes itself around environmental issues such as water use. Although some work already exists on environmental law in Portugal (Pureza, 1996) there is no systematic research done on the presence of water in Portuguese courts. <br />Nevertheless, water governance issues are earning growing relevance (Agudo and Ituarte, 2003), for the main question is no longer how to connect everybody as fast as possible to water supply networks but how to ensure the municipalities are able to regulate their operators properly. Various efforts are made to set up efficiency, performance, sustainability indicators, to facilitate the public auditing of utilities, or the benchmarking between them, or the control capacity of consumers and the other NGOs. (Barraquer 2002, Serra, 2003)</p><p>Pedro Arrojo Agudo e Leandro del Moral Ituarte (coord.), La Directiva Marco del Agua: Realidades y Futuros. III Congreso Ibérico sobre gestión y planificación del agua, Zaragoza: Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua, 2003.<br />Bernard Barraqué, Past and future sustainability of water policies in Europe, Natural Resources Forum, 27 (3), 200-211.<br />José Manuel Pureza (Dir.), Tribunais, Natureza e sociedade: o direito do ambiente em Portugal, Lisboa: CEJ, 1996<br />Pedro Cunha Serra “Política da água em Portugal: as tarefas da sustentabilidade”, in Viriato Soromenho Marques (coord.), O desafio da água no século XXI: entre o conflito e a cooperação, Lisboa: Instituto Português de Relações Internacionais e Segurança, 2003: 85-119. </p>
