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Delivering sustainable access to sufficient, safe water represents an urgent and profound global challenge in the face of increasing demand, resource overexploitation, and climate change contributing to unpredictable rainfall, salination and desertification. Much of the effort to reduce water poverty has centred on considering and declaring access to sufficient water to be a human right. Yet the continuing reality of water poverty for over 650 million people worldwide, even in countries where access to water is already a constitutional right, leads to a reappraisal of the role of human rights in water law and governance and of their ability to alleviate poverty.

Using a methodology of narrative inquiry, this book explores the practical consequences of these human rights failings to gain inspiration towards alternative approaches to water governance. In particular, attention is turning towards 'commons' modes of resource allocation, which promise to promote more interconnected, communal and grounded visions of water use, better suited to sustainable, equitable water governance. Detailed case studies are included from Argentina, India, Malawi and South Africa.