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How do people relate to water? Is it what comes out of the tap, what we buy in a bottle, what we live next to or near, what falls on us, floods us, feeds us, is us? Cristy Clark, in her fascinating new book Legal Geographies of Water: The Spaces, Places and Narratives of Human-Water Relations (Routledge 2025), challenges her readers to think about our relationships with water.
In the below interview, Dr. Clark explains her inspirations and use of the concept of “legal geography,” the many ways water can be recognized as a living thing, and the epiphany of her book’s thesis.
Who do you consider to be the intended audience of Legal Geographies of Water? Another way of asking this might be, who do you most want to read Legal Geographies of Water?
The core audience is clearly water law and policy nerds, but I would like anyone concerned about our collective future to read the book. We all have deeply entangled relationships with water and this book explores how the law can either support or disrupt those relationships in ways that, I think, concern everyone.
Was there a particular book or books that inspired you to write, or inspired you while you were writing, Legal Geographies of Water?
I have been deeply inspired by my research collaborators in writing this book. My co-author for my first book, The Lawful Forest, John Page, introduced me to legal geography, so he has been particularly influential. But I have also been heavily influenced by my other collaborators, including Anne Poelina, Erin O’Donnell, Elizabeth Macpherson, Alessandro Pelizzon, and Beth Goldblatt. Their books include: Declaration of Peace for Indigenous Australians and Nature, Legal Rights for Rivers: Competition, Collaboration, and Water Governance, Indigenous Water Rights in Law and Regulation, Ecological Jurisprudence: The Law of Nature and the Nature of Law, and The Right to the Continuous Improvement of Living Conditions.
What would you say is the thesis or central argument for Legal Geographies of Water?
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 emphasises the role of water itself in this co-constitutive process — through both its materiality and agency. The book argues that this analysis demonstrates that a new approach to water is desperately needed — or, at least, that we need to return to an older approach that recognises and nurtures our relationships with each other and with water. We cannot continue to behave as though we are separate from the rest of the planet, including from the water that cycles through us and the rest of the biosphere.
Recently, the Tribal Council of the Colorado River Indian Tribes declared the Colorado River a legal person. How does this action compare to the many case studies and “stories of hope” in your book?
Chapter seven of the book considers ‘ontologies of living waters’ (i.e. the multiple realities in which water is living and agentic) and focuses particularly on the example of the Whanganui River in Aotearoa New Zealand, which has been granted legal personhood under the Te Awa Tapua Act. However, it argues that legal personhood is not as significant as a range of other innovations contained in the Act, including the recognition of legal and ontological pluralism (by incorporating aspects of the legal system and world of the local Iwi/Māori tribe) and the new relational governance system that is being developed to implement this recognition. The final chapter of the book also notes a range of other rivers where related developments are occurring, including the Yarra-Birrarung (in Melbourne, Australia), which is recognised as a ‘single living entity’ rather than a legal person.
What book(s) would you like to see next to Legal Geographies of Water on the water shelf? Are there specific books that you think would pair well with Legal Geographies of Water, that you see Legal Geographies of Water in dialogue with, either reinforcing, challenging, or playing off each other’s arguments?
Erin and Liz’s books, Legal Rights for Rivers: Competition, Collaboration, and Water Governance and Indigenous Water Rights in Law and Regulation would both look great next to my book, and I would be honoured to be in their company. My book also explores the human right to water, and here it would sit well with Malcolm Langford and Anna Russell (eds) The human right to water. Theory, practice and prospects (CUP, 2017) and Farhana Sultana and Alex Loftus (eds) Water Politics: Governance, Justice and the Right to Water (Routledge, 2019).
What was the process like for getting Legal Geographies of Water published? What is your advice for anyone writing about water?
The editor for Water Politics (above) got in touch with me because she had enjoyed my chapter in the book (focused on water justice struggles in Flint and Detroit — the subject of chapter six of Legal Geographies of Water) and other work that I had published, and she asked if I would consider writing a book. At the time, I was working on another book (The Lawful Forest) and so I thanked her for the very kind offer and declined. But she was very lovely and persisted patiently over a number of years.
One night, I saw the thesis of my book clearly in my mind’s eye and could immediately see how so much of the research that I had already been doing for almost two decades would be relevant to informing my analysis — and how satisfying it would be to bring all those threads together across a larger canvas (so to speak). So, I got back in touch with her to accept her offer. (Afterwards, I still submitted a detailed proposal that was peer reviewed by four very kind anonymous academics, who were very encouraging and generous in their support for the project.)
As for advice: just do it! Water is so central to our survival and to the flourishing of the world. We need all hands on deck and a wealth of perspectives to generate a better future.
