'We Have Failed In Water Governance, Onus On Us To Use Law To Bring Change': Justice Muhamed Mustaque

The 3-day International Interdisciplinary Conference On Sustainable & Adaptive Water Governance: Law & Policy conducted by the National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS), Kochi, concluded on January 6.

Justice Muhamed Mustaque of the Kerala High Court, who was the Chief Guest for the Valedictory function, addressed the gathering.

Commenting on the importance of water governance, he stressed that we had failed ourselves in the governance aspect of the resource.

Posing the question as to where we, as a society, had gone wrong in water governance, he emphasized that we would have to focus on the ground level.

He said that the law has the capacity to transform, and is a tool to usher in changes and that the onus would be upon us to use law at a transformative level to bring in such changes. For this, he noted that we would have to think at an academic level.

The Conference was organized by the Centre for Environment Law, NUALS, under the aegis of Dr. Ambily P. (Director in charge of CEL).

‘Resource Management and Role of the Government’, ‘Transboundary Sharing of Resources’, ‘Protection of Freshwater Ecosystem’, and ‘Protection of Indigenous People’s Rights’ were the major thematic areas the Conference shed light upon.