The River Basin in History and Law

ISBN-13: 9789401504102 / Angielski / Miękka / 1967 / 228 str.

Ludwik A. Teclaff; Albert H. Garretson

Opis

Fresh water is one of man's most vital needs. The distribution of water within river basins has a direct bearing on the organization of water resources development to meet this ever-expanding need. River basins, despite their very great diversity in other respects, have one physical characteristic in common: each is a more or less self-contained unit within whose bounds all the surface and part or all of the ground waters form an interconnected, interdependent system. This inter dependence has such far-reaching implications - for pollution and flood control, apportionment of supply, relations between upstream and downstream riparians, to mention only a few examples - that the river basin has become almost universally accepted (within the past 20 or 30 years at least) as the unit of optimal water resources de velopment. Professor Teclaff's work (which was originally submitted to the New York University School of Law as a doctoral dissertation) is the first fully developed response to the important resolution passed by the International Law Association at its New York meeting in I958 recognizing the legal nature of the international river basin. His study quite properly, therefore, poses the question whether the adoption of the river basin unit is a temporary phenomenon, reflecting the current stage of technology and of administrative, economic, and legal thought on water resources development, or whether the de terminative influence of the river basin's physical unity which has always operated in the past will continue to operate in the future."

Spis treści

I. Introduction.- II. The Physical Unity of the River Basin.- III. The River Basin as the Basis of Water Control for Agriculture in Antiquity.- IV. Navigation and the Basin.- A. The influence of waterways on the political unification of river basins.- 1. Fluvial civilizations.- 2. Forest lands of northern Eurasia and North America.- a. Poland and the Oder River basin.- b. Russia in Europe and Asia.- c. France in North America, and the St. Lawrence basin.- B. The politically divided basin — a unit for navigation.- 1. Antiquity.- a. The Tigris-Euphrates basin.- b. The Nile basin.- c. European rivers.- 2. From the fall of the Roman Empire to the 17th century.- a. Legal bases for the use of rivers.- 3. The basin-wide extent of freedom of navigation from the 17th century to the era of multipurpose basin-wide development.- C. Influence of waterways on the commercial unification of river basins.- 1. The Vistula basin.- 2. The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River basin.- 3. The Mississippi basin.- D. Inter-basin links and basin unity.- V. Non-Navigational Uses and the Application of Water Law to the Basin.- A. Medieval background.- B. Eighteenth-century England.- C. Growth of modern industrialization and water use.- D. Changes in water law since the Industrial Revolution.- 1. Administrative disposition in continental Europe.- 2. The administrative system in the United States and Great Britain.- E. Effect of increased water use on politically divided river basins.- VI. Multipurpose Uses and Basin-Wide Development.- A. The river basin as a unit of national planning and administration.- 1. Basin authorities.- a. A link with the past — from the Commissioners of Sewers to the British River Boards.- b. Basin associations in the Ruhr.- c. Basin authorities in the 1930’s.- i. The Tennessee Valley Authority.- ii. The Compagnie Nationale du Rhône.- d. Basin authorities after TVA — plans and projects in the United States.- e. Basin authorities after TVA — outside the United States.- i. India — the Damodar Valley Corporation.- ii. Ceylon — the Gal Oya Development Board.- iii. Brazil-the Commissão do Valedo São Francisco.- iv. Colombia — Corporación Autonoma Regional del Cauca.- v. Ghana — the Volta River Authority.- vi. Australia — the Snowy Mountains Authority.- 2. Coordinating basin commissions and committees.- 3. Development of non-water resources.- B. The international river basin.- 1. Planning.- a. Bilateral treaties.- i. Rivers of the United States — Mexican border.- ii. The Nile.- iii. The Indus.- iv. The Columbia.- b. Multilateral treaties.- i. The Mekong.- ii. The Uruguay.- iii. The Niger River, the Senegal River, and Lake Chad.- 2. Administration.- C. Other areas as units for the development of water resources.- VII. Bringing the Legal Unity of the River Basin Into Focus.- Index of rivers and river basins.- General index.