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LEGAL FRAMEWORK AT THE NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL LEVELImage: Int. Assoc. for Water LawDomestic and transboundary water laws are enabling local communities to benefit from sustainable groundwater withdrawalsties to participate in water resource management. Thanks to theselaws, people can bring an action in the domestic law courts for anybreach of legislative rights. Public interest litigation is one of the legalmechanisms that allow individuals and groups to ‘vindicate the publicinterest’ and seek redress for injury suffered at the hands of publicauthorities or companies. Examples of this kind of litigation can befound in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where poorer sections of thecommunity are enabled to access the courts. In India, for example,the Supreme Court has heard complaints about water pollution,encroachment of the riverbed, mining and water management. Onesuch case resulted in the Coca Cola company being forced to relocateits business from the state of Kerala, after a long legal battle disputingthe company’s groundwater pumping stations at its bottling site. 3The Genevese aquifer, straddling the border between France andSwitzerland, is a good example of successful cross-border cooperationin managing the water resources of transboundary rivers, lakes oraquifers. Two formal agreements were negotiated in 1978 and 2008respectively, enabling intense cross-border cooperation between localcommunities sitting above the aquifer. As a result, the communitiesconcerned have paid for a successful artificial recharge programme forthe aquifer and implemented an effective programme of groundwaterwithdrawal controls with intense monitoring on both sides of theborder. This has enabled a stable supply of drinking-quality water toGeneva and the surrounding communities. The success of this crossbordercooperation is acknowledged to have been facilitated by thelatitude of formal legal engagement by the local communities acrossthe border, enabled by the international legal arrangements in place. 4Another useful example of lasting cross-border cooperation in aradically different sociopolitical, cultural and economic environ-ment is that between India and Pakistan over the waterresources of the Indus River basin. Prompted by anelaborate water-division treaty concluded in 1960, cooperationhas since survived the frequent political tensionsbetween the two countries. It has yielded irrigation andpower benefits to vast segments of the populations inhabitingthe river basin on both sides of the border. Theresilience of the 1960 treaty has been attributed to itsbeing extremely well crafted, and to its recognizing thecountries’ limitations and ring-fencing each country’saccess to the basin’s water resources. 5Mali, Mauritania and Senegal provide a furtherexample of successful cross-border collaboration.The countries cooperated in developing the water andpower potential of the Senegal River in West Africa,and in the management of water and power resourcesharnessed by the construction of the Manantali andDiama dams in the 1980s. This has delivered enormousbenefits in terms of dependable river water flowsfor irrigation, power generation, enhanced river navigabilityand flood control for the three cooperatingcountries, and especially for the river basin populationsliving across the borders. All of these benefitshave been made possible by an interlocking andpioneering web of inter-state agreements among thethree Senegal river basin countries spanning some30 years, from the signing of the Convention on theStatute of the Senegal River in 1972 to the adoption ofthe Senegal Waters Charter in 2002. 6[ 177 ]