Global Perspectives on the Emergence of Water Rights

在西方法律制度中，水权的演变似乎经历了从开放获取到公共控制再到专有使用的管理制度阶段。随着富水地区用水量的增加，这一进程就会发生。虽然这种模式有经验和理论支持，但到目前为止，这种观察是在西方和资源丰富的背景下进行的。巴克和格里森博士假设，相关使用的另一种制度--即拥有一些权利，但不是绝对的权利--在资源稀缺、与中央权力机构的经验丰富、公共产品占主导地位的地方发展。他们的研究在一个具有亚洲法律传统的干旱地区检验了这一假设：苏联中亚的阿姆河和锡尔达里亚河流域。这项研究包括分析苏联中亚各共和国现有的水权信息，对这些地区的用水者和管理人员进行深入访谈，并收集有关该地区法律、制度和环境变化的初步数据。研究苏维埃中亚水权安排的出现，可以加深我们对全球变化背景下产权和资源含义的理解。此外，很少有人尝试使用集体物品理论来比较共产主义国家和非共产主义国家的经验。苏联体制目前在法律、政治和经济转型方面正处于巨大的变化之中，这一事实只会增加这个项目的重要性。苏联中央集权的下放和围绕新出现的治理安排的不确定性使研究成为一个特别及时和关键的重点。

In Western legal institutions, the evolution of water rights seems to follow stages of management regimes from open access through communal control to exclusive use. This progression occurs as consumption increases in water-rich areas. While there is empirical and theoretical support for such a pattern, to date this observation has been made in western and well resourced contexts. Drs. Buck and Gleason hypothesize that an alternative regime of correlative use--that is, having some rights, but not absolute ones--develops where resources are scarce, experience with central authority strong, and public goods predominate. Their study tests this hypothesis in an arid region with Asian legal traditions: the Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya river basins of Soviet Central Asia. The research includes analysis of extant information on water rights in the central Asian republics of the USSR, in-depth interviews with water users and managers in these field locations, and primary data collection on legal, institutional, and environmental changes in the region. Studying the emergence of water rights arrangements in Soviet Central Asia can enhance our understanding of the meaning of property rights and resources in the context of global change. Also, there have been few efforts to use collective goods theory comparing the experience of communist and non-communist countries. The fact that the Soviet system is currently in tremendous flux in terms of legal, political, and economic transformations only adds to the importance of this project. The devolution of centralized authority in the Soviet Union and the uncertainty surrounding newly emerging governing arrangements make for a particularly timely and critical research focus.