Safe water is widely recognized as both a fundamental human need and a key input into economic activity. Across the developing world, the typical approach to addressing these needs is to segregate supplies of water for domestic use from water for large-scale agricultural production. In that arrangement, the goal of domestic water supply is to provide small amounts of clean safe water for direct consumption, cleaning, bathing and sanitation, while the goal of agricultural water supply is to provide large amounts of lower quality water for irrigated agriculture.

This publication offers a fresh look at the theory and practice of modern water rights, from a comparative law angle. It sheds light on a number of key features of such rights, and contrasts these to traditional forms and kinds of water rights. It teases out and discusses the relevant problematique, including in particular that elicited the sale and leasing of water rights. Finally, a stock-taking and assessment of modern water rights systems impacts are volunteered. This publication complements two earlier issues featured in the FAO Legislative Studies series, i.e.

En 1999, la FAO publiait la première version française du Thésaurus multilingue du foncier. Cette version avait surtout pour vocation d'être mise à l'épreuve du terrain, c'est-à-dire soumise aux critiques constructives tant des usagers à la recherche d'informations et d'éclairages nouveaux que des experts du foncier. En effet, sur le fond comme sur la forme, sont apparus un certain nombre de points forts mais aussi des lacunes, relevés depuis 1999 par l'équipe des rédacteurs et par de nombreux autres spécialistes du foncier.

Le présent document a été préparé pour encourager et faciliter la mise en application du Code de conduite pour une pêche responsable, en particulier l’Article 7: Aménagement des pêcheries. Il vise également à compléter le document no 4 de la Collection FAO: Directives techniques pour une pêche responsable, Aménagement des pêcheries.

This report examines the likely effects of additional agricultural water rights under the ColumbiaRiver Initiative (CRI) on net crop revenues (hay, orchards, vegetables, potatoes, wheat, and othercrops) in the state of Washington over the next 20 years. This study corrects for four potentiallyserious methodological flaws made in two previous studies associated with the CRI andconcludes that those studies substantially overestimated the net revenues accruing to producers inthe Columbia River area from new irrigated acreage under the CRI.