This project, supported by U.S. National Science Foundation Award #1324248, Law and Social Sciences Division (awarded August 2013), explored the effectiveness of legal, institutional and political mechanisms by which advocates attempt to translate social rights norms into practices. It integrated law and society literature with scholarship on human rights, sustainability and urban water governance, focusing on cases concerning water and sanitation sectors of three rapidly urbanizing areas of the Global South: São Paulo, Brazil; Delhi, India; and Johannesburg, South Africa.
The project’s objectives were to document and evaluate the role of legal and non-legal mechanisms in translating human rights and environmental norms to practices for water and sanitation; to analyze how well similar mechanisms operate across research sites and sectors; to document and evaluate the synergies, complementarities and/or contradictions when multiple mechanisms are in operation; to evaluate the role of state and non-state actors in promoting (or failing to promote) social rights; to identify and comparatively analyze pathways toward rights realization; and to identify configurations of mechanisms and pathways that, overall, seem most clearly associated with effective norm translation.
The work culminated in an international, inter-disciplinary workshop, “Law and Urban Water Governance: Cross-Country Dialogues on Human Rights and Sustainability Challenges,” held October 13-15, 2016 at Arizona State University, conceived in part as a forum for sharing the results of this research. A corresponding objective was to invite select interlocutors from the legal, policy, academic and advocacy communities to engage in cross-national comparison, empirical integration and theoretical synthesis across these largely separate realms, with an eye toward future collaborative projects that can inform and improve current policies and practices.
Contact
If you have any questions about the program, please contact the ASU Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation.
Shaping a thriving future
Law and Urban Water Governance has ceased operations, but other units of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory are continuing work that contributes to a healthy planet. Learn how the Global Futures Laboratory works and what we’re focusing on right now on our website.