Granting A Lawful Water Entitlement To Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems In India: As Legal Persons Or With The State As Trustee

Groundwater regulation in India is always property rights-based, following the common law framework of the land-water nexus. This regulatory framework has proved to be inequitable, non-inclusive and unsustainable in the context of increasing water demands and rising concerns of environmental impacts of its over-exploitation. This paper bases its argument on the current regulatory framework to showcase why the groundwater regulatory framework needs reconceptualisation and what the alternatives could be. In the light of public trust doctrine and the emerging discourse on rights of nature implemented through the legal personhood to rivers and water bodies, this paper explores the rationale, efficacy and potential for application of these alternatives in groundwater regulation in India to project both human right to water and the water for nature.

This paper is the result of a project of the IUCN WCEL Water and Wetland Group, titled ‘Reverberations in domestic and international law of the ecosystem support function of groundwater (2022-25)’ and was first published by Lawtext.

Views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinion or stand of the University.