Towards a New Water Institution-Economics, Law, and Policy

The widespread and persistent symptoms of an imminent water crisis are a clear testimony for the failure of our current water-related policies as well as the instruments and institutions through which they are implemented. It is now time to seek more durable, though politically harder and technically challenging, options like the institution of a water rights system. What is the status of the issue of water rights in current policy? What are the legal, economic, and physical characters and requirements that a water rights structure should satisfy? Do we have enough institutional and technical potential for instituting a water rights system capable of tackling the critical issue of water distribution between uses and users that too both across time and space?