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I work on problems of water rights and water policy at the intersection of law, geography, and political economy. My approach is comparative and interdisciplinary in research, teaching, and outreach. Since the mid 1980s I have focused on issues of water markets, privatization, conflicts, and governance; hydroelectric power, multiple water uses, and river basin development; and the law and political economy of regulation and property rights. In recent years I have turned to the nexus between water and electricity policies, particularly as they affect hydropower, in the current context of climate and environmental change. My regional expertise is in the Western United States and Latin America, especially Chile where I have lived and worked for many years. I work with graduate students and colleagues, both U.S. and foreign, to study water policies in the Americas as well as Spain, the European Union, Australia, and the international arena in general. I am concerned with empirical issues of law and public policy and I aim to bridge the gap between academic and policy audiences. I am regularly interviewed about water policy by journalists, professionals, and students in Latin America, the U.S.A., and Europe. My overall goal is to combine legal studies with environmental studies: to integrate different fields of law, history, geography, politics, and economics as they relate to water, land, and nature. This interdisciplinary approach to human-environment relations, grounded in history and the physical world, is what geography means to me. I have concentrated on water resources both because they are important in themselves and because water circulates through and ties together all other natural resources and environmental systems, making water a unique window on the world. More generally (beyond water), I am interested in the relationship between market economics, legal and institutional arrangements, and environment, and I focus my analytical framework on property rights because that is the area where all these fields overlap most closely. In recent years I have worked to strengthen the connections between the fields of geography and law-&-society, two interdisciplinary traditions with surprisingly little interaction.

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Courses
  • WES
    Water, Environment, and Society

  • WS
    Water and Sustainability

  • ELGS
    Environmental Law, Geography and Society

Grants
  • Funding agency logo
    Doctoral Dissertation Research: Indigenous Rights, Government Authority, and Stakeholder Alliances in Rural-Urban Water Conflicts

    Principal Investigator (PI)

    2019

    $17.4K
  • Funding agency logo
    Indigenous Rights, Government Authority, and Stakeholder Alliances in Rural-Urban Water Conflicts: Lessons From Owens Valley, California

    Principal Investigator (PI)

    2019

    $11.6K
  • Funding agency logo
    Hydropower on the Colorado River: Examining Institutions, Conflicts, and Consequences of Changing Dam Operations

    Principal Investigator (PI)

    2018

    $6.7K
  • Funding agency logo
    Innovative Science and Influential Policy Dialogues For Water Security in the Arid Americas

    Co-Investigator (COI)

    2014

    $744.2K
  • Funding agency logo
    Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Comparative Analysis of Arizona and Texas Groundwater Institutions

    Principal Investigator (PI)

    2013

    $15.6K
  • Funding agency logo
    Desalination: A Solution to the World's Water Woes?

    Principal Investigator (PI)

    2013

    $11.2K
  • Funding agency logo
    Governing Risk, Reuse, and Reclamation: Water Pollution Control and New Water Resources in the Southwestern United States

    Co-Investigator (COI)

    2011

    $48.4K
  • Funding agency logo
    Doctoral Dissertation Research: Governing the Environment Privately: Politics, Property, and Markets in Chile's Aquaculture and Forestry Sectors

    Principal Investigator (PI)

    2011

    $12.0K
  • Funding agency logo
    Water, Environment and Urban Development: Us and Eu Case Studies (Partner University Fund)

    Co-Investigator (COI)

    2009

    $27.6K
News
  • UA, Partners Launch Water Security Center for the Americas

    2012

  • UA, French Collaboration Builds Knowledge of Water Issues

    2010

Publications (52)
Recent
  • Understanding Conditioning Factors for Hydroelectric Development in Chile: Bases for Community Acceptance

    2022

  • The Protection of Nature and a New Constitution for Chile: Lessons from the Public Trust Doctrine

    2021

  • The Long View of the Water/Energy Nexus: Hydropower’s First Century in the USA

    2020

  • The long view of the water/energy nexus: Hydropower's 1st century in the USA

    2020

  • Trajectory of a divided river basin: law, conflict, and cooperation along Chile's Maipo River

    2018

  • Water, law, and development in Chile/California cooperation, 1960s-1970s

    2017

  • Water, Law, and Development in Chile/California Cooperation, 1960–70s

    2017

  • Governing the transition to renewable energy: A review of impacts and policy issues in the small hydropower boom

    2016

  • Represas y mercados: Ríos y energía eléctrica en Chile

    2016

  • Canto de Sirenas: El Derecho de Aguas Chileno como Modelo para Reformas Internacionales, 2nd ed.

    2015

  • Water conflicts and entrenched governance problems in Chile’s market model

    2015

  • Tapping water markets - book review

    2014

  • The experience of water markets and the market model in Chile

    2013

  • Hydroelectric power generation in Chile: An institutional critique of the neutrality of market mechanisms

    2011

  • Making environmental law for the market: The emergence, character, and implications of Chile's environmental regime

    2011

  • Out of the mainstream: water rights, politics and identity - book review

    2011

  • El abanico de bancos de aguas en las Américas

    2010

  • Market approaches to water allocation: Lessons from Latin America

    2010

  • Represas y mercados: Rios y energia electrica en Chile

    2010

  • Governing Water: Institutions, Property Rights, and Sustainability

    2010

  • Dams and markets: rivers and electric power in Chile

    2009

  • Water markets and freshwater ecosystem services

    2009

  • Water markets and freshwater ecosystem services: Policy reform and implementation in the Columbia and Murray-Darling Basins

    2009

  • The experience of Chilean water markets

    2008

  • El abanico de bancos de aguas en las Americas

    2007

  • In the image of the market: The Chilean model of water resources management

    2005

  • Freshwater ecosystem services

    2005

  • Siren song: Chilean water law as a model for international reform

    2004

  • Canto de sirenas: El derecho de aguas chileno como modelo para reformas internacionales

    2004

  • Results of Chilean water markets: Empirical research since 1990

    2004

  • Vendiendo agua, vendiendo reformas: Lecciones de la experiencia Chilena

    2004

  • Vendiendo agua, vendiendo reformas. Lecciones de la experiencia chilena

    2003

  • Activos líquidos: derechos de aguas, mercados de aguas y consecuencias para los mercados de tierras rurales

    2003

  • Contra la Corriente. Privatización, mercados de agua y el Estado en Chile. Against the Current: Privatization, Water Markets, and the State in Chile

    2003

  • Marketing Water, Marketing Reform: Lessons from the Chilean Experience

    2003

  • Contra la corriente: privatización, mercados de agua y el Estado en Chile

    2002

  • Derecho De Aguas

    2000

  • Derechos de agua, hidroenergía y la gestión ecológica de aguas: el caso del oeste norteamerciano

    2000

  • Long-Term Stewardship of Contaminated Sites: Trust Funds as Mechanisms for Financing and Oversight

    2000

  • Derecho y economía en la Constitución de 1980

    1998

  • Slippery property rights: Multiple water uses and the neoliberal model in Chile, 1981-1995

    1998

  • Law and Economics in the 1980 Constitution

    1998

  • Against the current: privatization, water markets, and the state in Chile

    1998

  • Bringing water markets down to earth: the political economy of water rights in Chile, 1976–1995

    1997

  • Privatización y capacidades institucionales: Los resultados del mercado de aguas en Chile

    1996

  • El mercado de aguas en California

    1996

  • Against the current? Privatization, markets, and the state in water rights: Chile, 1979-1993

    1995

  • Los derechos de agua y el mercado: efectos e implicancias del Código de Aguas chileno de 1981

    1993

  • Régimen jurídico del agua: la experiencia de Estados Unidos

    1993

  • Water, property rights, and the State: the United States experience

    1993

  • Labor without brains: water development, law and policy in Washington State, 1890-1935

    1988

Grants
Citations
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Opportunities