Symposium and Workshop: National strategies for promoting security and sustainability within a rapidly changing world

Thursday, January 20, 2011

http://www.dundee.ac.uk/water/symposium/


National Water Law: Managing Global Water Resources




Symposium and Workshop: National strategies for promoting security and sustainability within a rapidly changing world




June 20-24, 2011; Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science, University of Dundee, UK



Time Activities of Day 1: Monday 20th June 2011  
 9:00  Coffee and Registration
 9.30   Welcome – Principal Pete Downes,  Rector Brian Cox, Professor Patricia Wouters and Mr Andrew Allan
 10.00 The role of National Water Law - Professor Dan Tarlock. Includes break
 12.30 Lunch
 13.30 Water resource management and the implementation of national water law - Prof. Mike Muller
 15.30 Break
 16.00 What's in it for me? – group exercise
 17.00 Day 1 wrap-up – Prof. Patricia Wouters & Andrew Allan
 17.30 Reception
 Time Activities of Day 2: Tuesday 21st June 2011
 9.00 Introduction
 9.30 Water allocation systems - Andrew Allan.  Includes break.
 12:30 Lunch
 13:30 Excursion – Trip to St Andrews


Time
Activities of Day 3: Wednesday 22nd June 2011
9:00Introduction
9:15The management of water quality - Prof. Bill Howarth.  Includes break.
12:30Lunch
13:30Case study on national water law in India - Videh Upadhyay.  Includes break.
17:00Wrap-up day three Prof. Patricia Wouters and Andrew Allan
18:00Reception and Symposium Gala Dinner


 Time Activities of Day 4 : Thursday 23rd June 2011
 9:00 Introduction
 9:15 An introduction to the law on groundwater – Andrew Allan. Includes break
 12:30 Lunch
 13:30 Progression routes for continuing professional development: PG Cert, LLM (optional session) – Dr Sarah Hendry
 17:00 Legal case study group exercise.  Includes break
 18:00 Wrap-up day four Prof. Patricia Wouters and Andrew Allan
 TimeActivities of Day 5: Friday 24th June 2011
 9:00 Introduction
 9:15 The European legal context and the Water Framework Directive – Dr Sarah Hendry. Includes break
 12:30 Lunch
 13:30 Symposium wrap-up and closing remarks
 14:00 Sir Alan Langlands  Water Leaders Prize award
 15:00 Close

 

Fwd: Your Paper Makes SSRN Top Ten List

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Note: this is a working paper. Your comments are highly appreciated
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Your paper, "The Potential Role of the Human Right to Water in the Management of Indonesia's Water Resources", was recently listed on SSRN's Top Ten download list for Environment & Natural Resources eJournal. As of 12/27/2010, your paper has been downloaded 11 times. You may view the abstract and download statistics at http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1723205.

Top Ten Lists are updated on a daily basis. Click on the following link to view the Top Ten list for the journal Environment & Natural Resources eJournal Top Ten.

Click on the following link to view all the papers in the journal Environment & Natural Resources eJournal All Papers.

To view any of the Top Ten lists, click the TOP button on any network, subnetwork, journal or topic in the Browse list reachable through the following link: http://www.ssrn.com/Browse

Your paper may be listed in the Top Ten for other networks or journals and, if so, you will receive additional notices at that time.


 

Fwd: Your Paper Makes SSRN Top Ten List

 


Dear Mohamad Mova Al 'Afghani:

Your paper, "The Potential Role of the Human Right to Water in the Management of Indonesia's Water Resources", was recently listed on SSRN's Top Ten download list for Environment & Natural Resources eJournal. As of 12/27/2010, your paper has been downloaded 11 times. You may view the abstract and download statistics at http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1723205.

Top Ten Lists are updated on a daily basis. Click on the following link to view the Top Ten list for the journal Environment & Natural Resources eJournal Top Ten.

Click on the following link to view all the papers in the journal Environment & Natural Resources eJournal All Papers.

To view any of the Top Ten lists, click the TOP button on any network, subnetwork, journal or topic in the Browse list reachable through the following link: http://www.ssrn.com/Browse

Your paper may be listed in the Top Ten for other networks or journals and, if so, you will receive additional notices at that time.

If you have any questions regarding this notification or any other matter, please email AuthorSupport@SSRN.com or call 877-SSRNHelp (877.777.6435 toll free). Outside of the United States, call 00+1+585+4428170.

Sincerely,

Michael C. Jensen
Chairman
Social Science Research Network


 

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Indonesia - Investment Policy Review – OECD

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

The 2010 OECD Investment Policy Review contains a quite comprehensive assessment of Indonesia’s regulatory and investment policy. For those of you who areinvestment lawyers, Chapter 2 discusses in depth, Indonesia’s  implementation of international investment principles. Other aspects such as competition policy, infrastructure, and corporate governance were also addressed. A sneak peak of the book is available in Google Books . The book dedicate a sub chapter on water infrastructure (ch 5.6) and cited my newspaper Article (Indonesia Needs a Strong Water Services Law). The analysis on water related investment is not really in depth, but it agrees that vague laws and regulations could be a deterring factor for foreign investment in this sector. The book’s executive summary is available for a free download, but the complete hard and soft copy versions are not free.



 

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Transparency fighters and the rejection of authority

Monday, December 20, 2010

 

What do whistleblowers, transparency fighters, file sharing activists and defectors have in common? They may all possess the same personality trait: a rejection of authority. According to Esther Dyson in project syndicate:

 

 

But you probably need to be a bit weird and callous to devote your life to transparency for others. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the imprisoned ex-CEO of what was Russia's largest oil company, is another example of a flawed, uncompromising person who challenged the flawed people in power and their unaccountability. Such people do not die for our sins; Rather, they sin on our behalf, so that we may live comfortably while they afflict the authorities at great personal risk and in disregard of (authorities' interpretation of) the law and sometimes even ethics.

Information is always used to impose and safeguard an established authority. Because knowledge is power, only the priest are allowed to read the scriptures. This is evident in the ancient Mayan civilization who restricts the ability of reading and writing into a small circle of elite class. The spread of the printing press in the European history allows the Bible to be studied by commoners and along with Luther’s writings, paves the way to protestanism, ending the Catholic church monopoly to human salvation in the Christian world. 
Within the psyche of these leakers – whistleblowers, journalists, spies-- whatever you wish to call them, is the hidden desire to achieve some sort of equilibrium and a resentment to authority. These people are anarchists.




 

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Transparency leads to blackmail?

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

The Jakarta Post reported several months ago, that the State Audit agency (BPK) cease the publication of companies financial audit report due to blackmailing concerns. According to the article:

 

 

The Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) has stopped publishing online reports, to the dismay of freedom of information proponents. The agency said the state institutions it audited had complained that it was “too open”. BPK provided reports through the Internet even before the 2008 Law on Freedom of Information was implemented this year.

….

But reports of blackmail prompted the agency to close the online access, requiring information seekers to submit official letters to obtain a hard copy of reports. A public relations staffer of BPK, who requested anonymity, said, “The state institutions have been complaining that we were too open.” “[The institutions] said the reports had been used to blackmail them,” the source said recently.

Why fear blackmail if you are right? One of the possible reason is the corruption witch-hunt. The eradication of corruption in Indonesia is somewhat turning into a witch-hunt (a colleague in the UK is researching this for his Ph.D in Anthropology). Dealing with KPK and the Prossecutor office is cumbersome. This provides a disincentive for being transparent.

How do we handle this? Well, we need to provide more incentive for being more transparent. Transparency should not be used only for displaying the rotten apples of an organization, but also in highlighting the hidden jewels. This is what expert called a ‘targetted transparency’, which are conducted through, among other, publication of performance target benchmarked against certain a set of indicators.

 
Img source:mediaindonesia.com



 

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Human Right to Water and the Management of Indonesia’s Water Resources

Monday, December 13, 2010

I recently uploaded my World Water Week presentation’s background paper to the SSRN. The title of the paper is “The Potential Role of the Human Right to Water in the Management of Indonesia’s Water Resources”. In the paper, I argued that:
“…there are gaps in the Indonesian legal framework in securing transparency, access to information, participation, access to justice and the procedure in recognizing customary rights in water resources management. Without adequate access to these procedural rights, vulnerable, marginalized and financially weaker groups will be left out from water resources management and will not be able to secure their entitlements. The Human Right to Water has potentials for filling such gap by reforming the implementing regulation of the Water Resources Law and enhancing the possibility to obtain legal recourse”.

Colleague Hugo Tremblay reviewed this paper in his blog and commented “Reading the paper, it sometimes feels like the human right to water is constituted of a bundle of ‘substantive’ and ‘procedural’ rights (ex: see p.4 last §, as well as subsection 5.b on Right(s) to participation, transparency and access to information). Are these rights constituent human rights included under a human right to water? Are they considered as autonomous human rights? Is this an illustration of the doctrine of indivisible, inter-related and inter-dependent human rights?”

While the right to receive and impart information is recognized as a form human rights (Article 19 of the UDHR), the conflation of this right into ‘Freedom of Information’ has sometimes been contested. Although many argued that freedom of information is a human rights (see for example, this article from Toby Mendel), some skeptic may argue that the original intent of Article 19 of the UDHR is to protect free speech and not to provide specific access to governmental information.

Furthermore, the concepts of transparency, participation and access to justice is often mingled with ‘good governance’. A presentation from Susanne Schmidt of the UNDP asked a question: “Is IWRM an HRBA?” The present state of research appears to acknowledge that the two are ‘mutually reinforcing’ with the latter (HRBA) focusing on the equity aspect of governance. A joint working paper of several organisations even consider HRBA as a specific kind of ‘governance’.

I acknowledge that the concept of HRBA still needs further clarification. That, I will not deal in this post. I will reserve it for another day :)