About this Event
Description
Cristy will discuss her recently published book, Legal Geographies of Water, which begins with the recognition of a looming global water crisis in the 1970s and traces the next five decades of community and policy responses to this crisis, including the introduction of neoliberal logic through the liberalization, financializaton and privatization of water services; the legal recognition of a human right to water (and related water justice campaigns); and relational approaches to water governance. To illustrate the development and implementation of these water governance trends, the book uses a case study approach, drawing from twenty years of qualitative fieldwork in Chile, England, the Philippines (Manila), South Africa (Johannesburg), the United States (Detroit and Flint), Aotearoa, New Zealand (Whanganui), and Australia (Yarra-Birrarung, Melbourne and the Martuwarra-Fitzroy River, WA).
A central concern of the book is that, despite the last five decades of global action and periods during which key reported measures of access to safe drinking water have improved, humanity appears to be facing its worst water crisis yet, fuelled by a toxic combination of climate change, growing inequality, geopolitical instability, and the ongoing impacts of extractivism. This raises the question of what our current predicament means for the legal regulation of water. In responding to this question, this book employs the insights of legal geography to explore how the law shapes human relationships with water and how these relationships, in turn, shape the law. This analysis also emphasizes the role of water itself in this co-constitutive process – through both its materiality and agency.
In this talk, Cristy will particularly focus on the lessons that emerge from the book’s analysis, the stories of hope that it highlights, and the recommendations that it makes for the future of water governance.
Speaker
Dr Cristy Clark is an Associate Professor at the Canberra Law School, where she teaches Human Rights Law and Constitutional Law. Her research focuses on legal geography and the intersection of human rights and the environment (including relational rights and climate justice). Cristy is the co-director of the climate equality working group at the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law. Her co-authored book (with John Page), The Lawful Forest: A Critical History of Property, Protest and Spatial Justice, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2022 and won the 2023 Penny Pether Prize. Her most recent book, Legal Geographies of Water: the spaces, places and narratives of human-water relations was published by Routledge in June 2025.
Other Information
This event is part of the Oxford Water Network Hilary Term 2026 Seminar Series. Refreshments will be provided after the talk. Please email [email protected] if you have any specific requirements to be able to access this event. The Atmosphere Room is on the first floor of the School of Geography and the Environment in the Dyson Perrins Building - there is a ramp to enter the building and a lift to access the first floor.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford, United Kingdom
USD 0.00
