McIntyre, Owen --- "International water law and SDG 6: mutually reinforcing paradigms" [2018] ELECD 522; in French, Duncan; Kotzé, J. Louis (eds), "Sustainable Development Goals" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018) 173

Book Title: Sustainable Development Goals

Editor(s): French, Duncan; Kotzé, J. Louis

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781786438751

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: International water law and SDG 6: mutually reinforcing paradigms

Author(s): McIntyre, Owen

Number of pages: 28

Abstract/Description:

While legal frameworks will inevitably play a central role in shaping the actions necessary for realisation of SDG 6, which commits the international community to ensuring universal availability of adequate water and sanitation services and sustainable management of the water resources on which such services depend, it is equally clear that the values set out in SDG 6 will significantly influence the continuing evolution, development and implementation of relevant legal measures and approaches. In order to illustrate this close, two-way inter-relationship, this chapter explores the mutually supportive approaches embodied in international water and human rights law and in SDG 6. The former fields of normativity have already developed rules and principles intended to promote broad rights to water and sanitation and to require environmental protection of shared international water resources and the ecosystems dependent thereon. However, articulation and formal adoption of SDG 6 represents formal universal political commitment to such values, which can only serve to legitimise and inform such norms.