Kuwait ponders a future after fossil fuels

Kuwait City skyline

Kuwait is an oil country, and Kuwait City glows with prosperity. Kuwaitis know, though, that they can't ride the oil train forever.

Earlier this month, I took part in a program of the Kuwait Bar Association (KBA) and International Association of Lawyers (UIA) in Kuwait on the mediation of energy disputes. (All photos RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.)

Kuwait Bar Association (Society of Lawyers)

The program addressed both state and corporate actors, which often in the Middle East are functionally the same, as political royals are only formally differentiated from their investments. Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 largely in response to long-running disputes over access to oil reserves under the countries' desert border. So it's understandable that Kuwait, powered by a 70-year-old, $1tn sovereign wealth fund born almost entirely of oil revenue, is an eager evangelist for non-violent dispute resolution in extractive industries.

Kuwait Towers

I spent some additional time in Kuwait, besides the KBA-UIA program, to see the sights of Kuwait City. The first place I went was the iconic Kuwait Towers. Dating to 1979, the towers were designed to be monumental more than functional, architecturally distinct among Kuwait's historical water towers, a remaining few clusters of which dot the urban landscape. Repaired since they were trashed in the Iraq invasion, and refurbished in the 2010s, the Kuwait Towers are a patriotic reminder of a Kuwait that long imported fresh water for its survival, before oil wealth paid for expensive but effective desalinization. 

Dhow model at Marine Museum

On display at the Al Hashemi Marine Museum and the Maritime Museum are Kuwaiti dhows dating to the 19th century. Some were used for pearling, the dangerous prospect but potential big score of a once seafaring economy. Many of the dhows are specially fitted with large water tanks running along the keel.

Thus imported, water historically was famously expensive in Kuwait. There's still a popular maxim that water, the truly scarce resource of the desert, is more expensive than oil. Water still is expensive, or should be, because desalinization is expensive and largely fossil fueled. 

Other legacy water towers

Government subsidies, however, obscure the cost of water. A combined utility bill in Kuwait, including water, electricity, sewer, garbage, etc., might run US$40 or $50 a month, single family—a lot for some locals, especially ex-pat laborers. But even correcting to U.S. cost of living with a 250% multiplier, utilities including water are far cheaper than in the States. Environmentalists fret over the conceit that water is inexpensive. I thought that my hotels would caution about water consumption, as is common in desert countries, not to mention American desert states, but they did not.

In keeping with the maxim, petrol is cheap. I was worried when Europcar warned me that gas stations accept only cash—until I worked out the prices. I filled up my SUV rental's 13-gallon (about 50L) tank for less than US$10.

Evening recreation at Dasman Beach

There's much to see in Kuwait City, in terms of museums and historical sites. What struck me, though, is the prevalence of western influence and a near indifference to foreign tourism. Attractions are aimed at locals. Kuwait excels at affording its people diversions of all kinds, including the educational and recreational: museums, beaches, playing fields. But the focus is decidedly domestic, bringing the world to Kuwaitis, not the other way around.

Texas Roadhouse Beneid Al Gar, one of three Kuwait City locations

Limited opening hours and a ramshackle bus system make many attractions difficult to access for visitors. Ride-share app Careem works well, though drivers speak little English. Some places' websites are in Arabic only. Besides foods, souvenirs are sorely limited: the norm is an assortment of refrigerator magnets and ball caps with cheap, afterthought patches. Walking south from Kuwait Towers on the city's corniche, the extent of Kuwait's Americanization in particular is on full display. Behind the beaches, the chain restaurants line up: TGI Friday's, the Cheesecake Factory, Texas Roadhouse.

One arm of Souq Al-Mubarakiya

Besides the beach, a favorite evening destination for locals is one of the city's many shopping malls, from the central 1,250-square-foot Assima Mall, with its gourmet Monoprix grocery, to the sprawling 334-acre (1.35m-square-meter) Avenues, with more than 1,100 retailers. Notwithstanding the scale and upscale nature of these operations, they are loaded with the sort of western retailers found on main street anywhere. There's plenty to buy, eat, and drink—besides alcohol; Kuwait is a dry country—but very little that is specially Arabian. A more touristically gratifying destination is the city's Mubarakiya Souq, though its modernized storefronts also cater mostly to local needs. The people-watching is better than the shopping.

Camels, highwayside

To see more than just the city, and also to get a closer look at both rural life and Kuwaiti infrastructure, I drove out both to the Iraq border in the north and to the Saudi border in the south. The highway network is impressive, if a work in progress, strong on asphalt, weak on road marking. Polished bridges here and there are designed for the exclusive use of crossing camels.

In both the north and the south, the desert is dotted with green patches of farms, fed, remarkably, by well water. Visiting these farms for markets of fresh produce, petting zoos, and other children's amusements is a seasonal family pastime.

Starbucks Wafra

Near the Saudi border, the town of Wafra is the center of an equine economy. Riding centers, breeding operations, and a market for export speak to the enduring importance of horses in Arabia. On Wafra's dusty outskirts, I was surprised to find a cluster of modern buildings, including a multistory veterinary center and, no kidding, the farthest flung Starbucks I've ever seen. A sign at Starbucks cautioned that horses are not permitted in the drive-thru.

Electric towers in the desert

Strung across the desert landscape is a mind-boggling network of electric towers, stretching lines into the distance from any vantage point. Kuwait imports electricity from Gulf partners such as Qatar and Oman, and even then struggles to meet demand in sweltering summers (e.g., N.Y. Times). Meeting electrical needs is simultaneously an incentive and an obstacle to Kuwait energy transition away from fossil-fuel dependence.

Change through energy transition and emission reduction was a recurring theme at the mediation program, besides the benefits and skills of mediation itself. I did not expect to hear, and am not accustomed to hearing, harsh criticism of fossil-fuel dependence in the Middle East. Yet in a session titled "The Climate Crisis and the Transition Imperative," speakers were adamant opponents of the status quo.

Panelists: Yousef Al-Abdullah; Elena Athwal, Qatar,
founder and CEO of consulting firm Icelis Global; and Sara Akbar

Moderator Sara Akbar, a chemical petroleum engineer, current CEO of Oilserv Kuwait, and a renowned figure in the modern history of Kuwaiti oil development, condemned the "New World Disorder" of Trumpian climate-change denial and on-again-off-again Paris participation. She argued passionately that the global costs of unchecked climate change, including devastated coastal cities and lost lives, will vastly outpace the costs of energy transition to renewables. According to Akbar, even the Kuwait oil industry understands that the era of fossil-fuel dominance in the Kuwait economy must end.

Akbar cited an interesting and alarming local statistic: Kuwait has long monitored the maximum temperature of the Persian Gulf at the sea floor, which reliably marked 95 or 96 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, she said, it routinely exceeds 100 degrees, evidencing the evaporation that is fueling catastrophic rainstorms from Dubai to Bangladesh.

Yousef Al-Abdullah, research scientist at the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, discussed the energy transition and emission reduction commitments of Gulf states. In contrast with the U.S. re-withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and Trump Administration promise to double-down on drilling, Gulf states have articulated ambitious aims.

A leader in goal-setting is the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The UAE aims for 47% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030. In energy transition, the UAE aims for 15% renewables in its energy mix; has adopted a net-zero target, green hydrogen strategy, independent energy regulator, and national climate law; plans a massive expansion of solar capacity; and is investing more than $14 billion in transition this fiscal year.

Persian Gulf coastline from Kuwait Towers

Kuwait looks weak on the same benchmarks. But that's not the whole story, Al-Abdullah said. Kuwait believes that some neighbors have announced goals they can't realistically meet, such as the Saudi aim to cut 278m tons of annual GHG emissions by 2030, and Kuwait wants to be realistic. Notwithstanding articulated commitments on the international stage, Kuwait has announced targets domestically, Al-Abdullah said, such as net-zero in the oil sector by 2050, and in other sectors by 2060.

Oil production is down over 10 years, Al-Abdullah said, and that's problematic for environmental strategy. The economy remains dependent on fossil fuels, to the tune of 90% of revenues, and a strong economy is needed to transition away from fossil fuels. Production is down for many reasons, including OPEC restrictions; increased competition from other sources, such as Uruguay, Paraguay, Guyana, Mauritania, and Uganda; and rising production costs.

Here my observation on Kuwait's underdeveloped tourism economy is salient, at least in small part. Because Al-Abdullah said that key to Kuwait's future is diversification of the economy, reducing the dominant position of fossil fuels, especially relative to a newly developed service sector. 

In domestic policy, a national plan called "Kuwait Vision 2035" contemplates an economy centered on logistics, leveraging Kuwait's world-crossroads location by, for example, expanding airport and seaport capacity. Vision 2035 imagines a Kuwait that is more livable for residents and hospitable to visitors, expanding highways and building a rail and metro system.

Besides infrastructure, transformation of Kuwait's workforce is required, too. Kuwait suffers an affliction known to other oil-rich states, which is a comfortable, but under-skilled national workforce. Kuwait's education system must rise to meet the challenge of preparing Kuwaitis to participate in the new economy, while the social and economic fabric must expand the job market and incentivize people to enter it.

Like other Middle Eastern states, Kuwait has a worrisome dependence on foreign workers. Ex-pats, whom I mentioned above, constitute some 70% of the resident population and have no pathway to citizenship. Blue-collar workers hale especially from the Asian subcontinent and Pacific rim. Qatar's plight in this regard was highlighted and made controversial by the location of the 2022 FIFA World Cup there; whether reforms were meaningful or sufficient is debatable.

The existing service economy, including legal, financial, and engineering services, depends heavily on ex-pat white-collar workers, too, who make up a fair chunk of that 70%. At the KBA-UIA program, I met lawyers from other Arabic-speaking countries who have worked for years, even decades, in Kuwait. They are generously permitted to practice, more than an out-of-jurisdiction lawyer may in the States, on matters related to their home jurisdictions. But there's no pathway to bar admission, such as might expose the domestic market to competition.

Legal and regulatory reforms will have to complement the development of a service sector and trade center, Al-Abdullah said. I don't think Kuwaitis alone will be able to make that change. Rather, Kuwait will have to open itself up with a more robust immigration framework, affording ex-pats the likes of property and other rights, if not naturalization, to foster a justified sense of ownership in the new economy.

KOC Oil and Gas Exhibition Hall

Apropos of energy transition, one of the most interesting tourist attractions in Kuwait is the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) Oil and Gas Exhibition. The exhibition—reservations required for guided tours only—offers an artfully constructed tour of the history of Kuwait, from its desert and seafaring cultural history, to British protectorate and the discovery of oil, rise to global energy power, and Iraq invasion, destruction, and recovery.

Exhibit dramatizing Kuwait oil extraction: every second, every day

The exhibition is decidedly a paean to oil. But it is not wholly environmentally tone-deaf. One dramatic exhibit shows, with a massive gush of black liquid, the astonishing amount of oil that Kuwait pumps from the earth every second of every day, averaged out. The exhibits don't say it plainly, but there is an undeniable implication that this business model is not indefinitely sustainable.

The next chapter of Kuwait energy policy is ready to be written.

Tchotchkes for sale at the KOC Oil and Gas Exhibition gift shop

Kuwait sign on the corniche

Space law program reaps lessons from House Atreides

Luca Galuzzi via The Wildcat Tribune, Dougherty Valley High School, San Ramon, Cal. CC BY-SA 2.5

My friend and colleague Tracy Reynolds, Staff Judge Advocate to U.S. Naval Medical Forces Atlantic, will lead a fascinating Dune II-contemporaneous panel next week.

Zoom registration is open and free for Friday, March 29, at 12 noon US EDT.

International Humanitarian Law in Space:
Lessons Learned from the Fall of House Atreides

What can we learn about resource scarcity, insider threats, and over-reliance on technology from Frank Herbert's novel Dune and its recent film adaptation? How may these lessons be applied in outer space, on the Moon, or on Mars? Join the American Red Cross IHL Program as our panel of distinguished legal experts examine a wide range of issues, from great power competition on Arrakis to the conduct of hostilities between the Atreides, Harkonnen, and Fremen.

The panel comprises:

• CDR Tracy Reynolds, United States Navy JAG Corps
• David Kohnen, the Captain Tracy Barrett Kittredge Scholar of War Studies and Maritime History at the US Naval War College
• Michelle L.D. Hanlon, Co-Director of the Air and Space Law Program at the University of Mississippi School of Law and its Center for Air and Space Law
• Thomas Harper, Senior Counsel, International Humanitarian Law, American Red Cross National Headquarters
• Namrata Goswami, author of Scramble for the Skies The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space

The program is sponsored by the American Red Cross and supported by the Space Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law.

Rats reveal human history, sometimes set its course

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A rat extermination program is well signed on the islands of the Azores.

As a tort lawyer, I can be a little obsessed with signs, especially warnings. So I was struck by the abundance of these signs on the islands of the Azores, specifically São Miguel, Terceira, and Pico, where I spent some time this month. The signs warn not to remove bait traps loaded with lethal rodenticide and not to litter, such as might provide food for rats.

Being a key port in the European age of discovery, the Azores are inextricably bound up with the history of human exploration and expansion. A remarkably successful species, rats are a part of that history, because they go where we go. The Azorean bat is the only native land mammal of the Azores. But people long ago brought more, including hedgehogs, rabbits, cats, and the islands' iconic cows, all besides, of course, rats.

The Azorean bat is found in dry forests. In contrast,
I am found here in the much wetter Reserva Florestal
Natural Parcial do Biscoito da Ferraria, on Terceira.
(Photo © Emma Falk, licensed exclusively.)

Unfortunately, the rats are now spreading a potentially fatal pathogen, leptospira, which threatens people and animals in the Azores. So officials have set about efforts to reduce the rat population.

There's been an abundance of research sequencing rat DNA to study the history of human exploration. For example, Gabriel, Mathias, & Searle (2014) studied rats in the Azores specifically. There are books on the history that rats and people share: Anthony Barnett's The Story of Rats (2002) and the New York City-focused Rats (2005) by New Yorker contributor Robert Sullivan. As the latter book suggests, rat research also informs contemporary urban development. Canadian "rat detective" Kaylee Byers wrote a fun first-person narrative for The Conversation (2019) on the value of "23andme" for rats.

Rats have a fan club.

The signs in the Azores reminded me in particular of a superb episode of the Throughline podcast in the spring, "Of Rats and Men," which well summarized the subject.

Oil, uranium motivated Trump to slash Bears Ears; litigation, land use questions now sit on Biden's desk

President Biden is likely to undo the Trump Administration's dramatic reduction of protected land in southern Utah, including the Bears Ears National Monument.  If he does, the restoration will end litigation over the permissibility of rescission under the Antiquities Act and extinguish ambitions of the natural resource extraction industry.  [Update, Oct. 7.]

Traveling in Utah in recent weeks (drought, torts), I spent time crossing the south of the state from the Navajo Nation in the east to the Dixie National Forest in the west.  In the Escalante region in between, a whopping 1.88 million acres of south-central Utah is set aside as protected land under the Antiquities Act of 1906, an enactment of the Teddy Roosevelt Administration and genesis of the American park system, as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM).

A famous feature of GSENM is Grosvenor Arch, named for Gilbert H. Grosvenor,
the first full-time editor of National Geographic.

GSENM (U.S. BLM)

Immediately east of GSENM, the narrow Glen Canyon National Recreation Area tracks the Colorado River from Canyonlands National Park to Lake Powell.  And just east of there, couched within an L of the north-south Glen Canyon and the east-west Navajo Nation is the 1.35 million acres that President Obama designated, or proclaimed, in December 2016, as Bears Ears National Monument.

You might have heard of Bears Ears, because it was at the heart of the controversy ignited when President Trump attempted to substantially rescind the Obama proclamation and vastly reduce the size of public lands in southern Utah.  By proclamation in December 2017, President Trump shrank the Bears Ears designation from 1.35 million acres to just under 230,000 acres, and he cut GSENM almost in half, from 1.88 million acres to just about one million acres (L.A. Times graphics).

Bears Ears NM (U.S. BLM) (red border)

The power of a President to undo a designation under the Antiquities Act is an open legal question.  In the 1970s, Congress undid a perceived overreach by the Carter Administration in protecting land in Alaska.  But the executive power to roll back designations is untested, and Trump's rollbacks were, like so many things about the Trump Administration, unprecedented.  Lawsuits followed from environmentalists and Native American tribes.

"Bears Ears" refers specifically to two buttes, and they are a universally and immediately recognizable landmark in southern Utah.  On a clear day, they can be seen from both Monument Valley Tribal Park in Arizona and Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado.  Driving the Trail of the Ancients from the Valley of the Gods, up the Moki Dugway from Mexican Hat, Utah, I recognized the Bears Ears right away when they popped up over the scrubby horizon.  They truly do give the unmistakable impression of first sighting a bear in the wilderness, ears poking up over shrubbery.

My first sighting of Bears Ears buttes

Bears Ears buttes in a National Park Service photograph

Bears Ears National Monument embraces the Trail of the Ancients and a vast range of sites that are archaeologically invaluable and culturally precious to multiple tribes, including the Navajo, Ute, Pueblo, Hopi, and Zuni.  Historic cliff dwellings, sacred burial grounds, petroglyphs, and pictographs abound in the region.  Headlong development plans and rampant looting of indigenous artifacts were key motivators of pleas for federal protection.  The buttes are at the center of it all geographically and symbolically, but it's the surrounding land that really matters.

Petroglyphs such as these at Capitol Reef National Park date between 300 and 1300.

So that was the frame in which I understood the controversy over Bears Ears before I went to Utah: a classic problem of conservationism versus economic development, collectivist versus objectivist land use, both sides with fair claims to the greater good.  The heuristic is a cost-benefit analysis, but different decision-makers variably assess intangibles such as environment, culture, and history.  And the whole calculation is awkwardly tinged with the shame of America's imperial legacy vis-à-vis indigenous peoples.

That framing is accurate—but incomplete.

There is an angle that I was missing, and it became apparent on the ground, literally.  My back-country drive was the tip-off.  The Moki Dugway is a spectacular unpaved mountain pass, not for the vertigo-inclined.  The pass was carved out by private enterprise specifically to transport uranium mined in Fry Canyon to a processing facility in Mexican Hat.  Bears Ears is not just about conventional land use.  It's about what lies beneath: coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium.  The Trump reductions to Bears Ears and GSENM were mapped specifically to kowtow to the extractive industries.

Moki Dugway

Panorama from the Moki Dugway, looking south toward Monument Valley

Valley of the Gods from the Moki Dugway

This is a FOIA story.  Extraction is rarely mentioned in news reports about Bears Ears.  But a media lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act yielded some 5,000 pages of records from the Department of Interior that show, The New York Times headlined in 2018, that "oil was central."

Bears Ears proposed boundary revision,
attached to Hatch office email,
to "resolve all known mineral conflicts"

In March 2017, the office of Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) transmitted to the Trump Interior Department maps of mineral deposits in the Bears Ears National Monument with email messages, such as, "Please see attached for a shapefile and pdf of a map depicting boundary change for the southeast portion of Bears Ears monument." As the Times reported, a map recommending monument reduction "was incorporated almost exactly into the much larger reductions President Trump announced in December, shrinking Bears Ears by 85 percent."

Publicly, Trump Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke downplayed the role of extraction in the decision-making, for example, once declaring, according to the Times, "We also have a pretty good idea of, certainly, the oil and gas potential—not much! .... So Bears Ears isn't really about oil and gas."

Meanwhile, the Times reported, "internal Interior Department emails and memos also show the central role that concerns over gaining access to coal reserves played in the decision by the Trump administration to shrink the size of the [GSENM] by about 47 percent ...."  According to the Times, "Mr. Zinke's staff developed a series of estimates on the value of coal that could potentially be mined from a section of Grand Staircase called the Kaiparowits plateau.  As a result of Mr. Trump's action, major parts of the area are no longer part of the national monument.

"'The Kaiparowits plateau, located within the monument, contains one of the largest coal deposits in the United States,' an Interior Department memo, issued in spring 2017, said.  About 11.36 billion tons are 'technologically recoverable,' it projected."

In contrast, the Times reported, 20,000 pages of Interior records accessed in the FOIA lawsuit "detail the yearslong effort during the Obama administration to create new monuments, including input from environmental groups, Indian tribes, state officials and members of Congress."

Another Hatch office email attachment:
USGS-mapped uranium deposits
in and around Bears Ears

Earlier, in January 2018, Times reporting based on public records obtained from the Utah Bureau of Land Management revealed the centrality of uranium extraction in public policy on Bears Ears.  As controversial uranium mining operations were set to resume near the Grand Canyon, the Times reported, and "even as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke declared last month that 'there is no mine within Bears Ears,' there were more than 300 uranium mining claims inside the monument.

"The vast majority of those claims fall neatly outside the new boundaries of Bears Ears set by the administration. And ... about a third of the claims are linked to Energy Fuels, a Canadian uranium producer. Energy Fuels also owns the Grand Canyon mine, where groundwater has already flooded the main shaft.

"Energy Fuels, together with other mining groups, lobbied extensively for a reduction of Bears Ears, preparing maps that marked the areas it wanted removed from the monument and distributing them during a visit to the monument by Mr. Zinke in May."

Straight line of uranium "road scar" at Capitol Reef,
visible from upper left to lower right

Not just on the Moki Dugway, the legacy of uranium mining is evident on the landscape in southern Utah.  For example, in the stunning vista of Grand Overlook at Canyonlands National Park, some unusually straight lines in the earth stand out in contrast with the curving tracks along the hilly contours.  The straight lines, a ranger told me, are "road scars" from truck routes, transporting the yield of uranium mines before the national park was established in 1964. 

At Capitol Reef National Park, on the eastern edge of GSENM north of Glen Canyon, one can see the fence-wood-sealed holes of old uranium mines on hillsides and cliff faces, always tracking a pale yellow stratum in the rock.  According to a National Park Service signboard, "[t]he thin band of yellow-gray" is "a layer of ancient, river-deposited sandstone containing trace amounts of uranium....

"Exploration and milling of uranium was encouraged by the US Atomic Energy Commission in the 1950s during the Cold War.  Prospectors flocked to the Colorado Plateau.  Even protected National Park Service lands were opened to mining.  Despite strong opposition from park managers, companies were allowed to build roads, dig mines, and construct camps in previously undisturbed lands."

Fenced uranium mine openings in yellow stratum at Capitol Reef National Park

Part of NPS signboard at Capitol Reef National Park

I do not here want to ignore the public good that flows from natural resource extraction.  I drive a car and heat a home with fossil fuels.  The Hatch memos to the Interior Department said that state taxes and fees on natural resource extraction would be used to fund public schools, libraries, and infrastructure.  Extraction provides jobs and drives economic development, which betters social conditions.  And as the Capitol Reef signboard intimated, domestic uranium yield was, and still is, vital to the national defense and can be supportive, or in other hands disruptive, of global security.

I don't here subscribe mindlessly to collectivist dogma.  My complaint is against opacity and deception.  The electorate can calculate the public good only with a complete and accurate accounting of the variables.

Three federal lawsuits over the Bear Ears/GSENM reductions were consolidated in Hopi Tribe v. Trump, No. 1:17-cv-02590-TSC (D.D.C. filed Dec. 4, 2017) (Court Listener).  By executive order on Inauguration Day in January 2021, President Biden instructed the Interior Department to review the Trump proclamations on Bears Ears and GSENM, as well as a marine national monument off the New England seaboard.  In March, the court granted a stay in Hopi Tribe, waiting to see what the Biden Administration would do.

Earlier this month, the Interior Department delivered its report to the White House.  The report has not been made public, but media outlets, including the Times, reported that Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, member of the Laguna Pueblo and the nation's first Native American cabinet secretary, recommended restoration of the national monuments to their pre-Trump proportions.  In a joint status report filed with the Hopi Tribe court on June 3, the parties asked the court to extend the stay, pending the President's reaction to the report from Interior.

Your humble blogger at Cedar Break National Monument in the Dixie National Forest

 (All photos not otherwise attributed: by RJ Peltz-Steele, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.)

New scholarly treatise examines global water deficit

My colleague and friend Dr. Piotr Szwedo, Jagiellonian University, has published the new treatise, Cross-Border Water Trade: Legal and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2018), appearing as volume 32 of Brill-Nijhoff's Queen Mary Studies in International Law series.  With water law being a key emerging issue around the globe in our contemporary times, this volume marks an important contribution to the literature.  Congratulations, Piotr!  Download the PDF flyer for your library.  Here is the publisher's description:

Cross-border Water Trade: Legal and Interdisciplinary Perspectives is a critical assessment of one of the growing problems faced by the international community — the global water deficit. Cross-border water trade is a solution that generates ethical and economic but also legal challenges. Economic, humanitarian and environmental approaches each highlight different and sometimes conflicting aspects of the international commercialization of water. Finding an equilibrium for all the dimensions required an interdisciplinary path incorporating certain perspectives of natural law. The significance of such theoretical underpinnings is not merely academic but also quite practical, with concrete consequences for the legal status of water and its fitness for international trade. 

Piotr Szwedo, Ph.D. habil. (b. 1979) is a lecturer in international law and Head of OKSPO Centre for Foreign Law Schools at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. He published monographs and articles on international economic law and global governance. 

Table of Contents

Preliminary Questions
    Pages: 1–38
 

In Search of a Regulatory Model
    Pages: 39–89
    

Water as an Article of Trade in WTO Law
    Pages: 90–130
 

Water Trade in the International Practice of States
    Pages: 131–207
 

Principles and Institutions of International Law as Conditions of and Restrictions on Water Trade
    Pages: 208–315

Ending Notes