Priority General Authorisations in rights-based water use authorisation in South Africa
| dc.creator | van Koppen, Barbara | |
| dc.creator | Schreiner, B. | |
| dc.date | 2014-11-01 | |
| dc.date | 2015-03-17T14:40:00Z | |
| dc.date | 2015-03-17T14:40:00Z | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-06-27T18:35:48Z | |
| dc.description | This article unravels the notions of justice in statutory water law in Sub-Saharan Africa in general and South Africa in particular. These laws, which allocate and regulate water resources, are licence (or permit) systems. Three forms of injustices are identified for small-scale water users who typically encompass all poor water users: the reinforcement of the historical injustices by which colonial powers captured ownership of water resources and undermined customary water law; administrative discrimination as a result of governments’ lack of capacity to license the large numbers of small-scale users; and discrimination of the smallest-scale users whose exemption from the obligation to apply for a licence relegates them to a second-class entitlement to water. Based on the texts and implementation experiences of the National Water Act (1998) and the pro-poor prioritisation rules in the National Water Resource Strategy-2 (2013), the authors propose the transformative legal tool of priority General Authorisations for black small-scale users to overcome these injustices. Via this tool all black small-scale users, including the poor, would obtain equal access to minimum quantities of water needed to progressively achieve constitutional rights to water, food, and non-discrimination, while the remaining water resources would be allocated to high-impact users through licences with strict and enforceable conditions. | |
| dc.identifier | https://hdl.handle.net/10568/58449 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/160395 | |
| dc.language | en | |
| dc.publisher | IWA Publishing | |
| dc.rights | Limited Access | |
| dc.source | van Koppen, Barbara; Schreiner, B. 2014. Priority General Authorisations in rights-based water use authorisation in South Africa. Water Policy, 16:59-77. doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/wp.2014.110 | |
| dc.subject | gender | |
| dc.subject | water use | |
| dc.subject | water resources | |
| dc.subject | water law | |
| dc.subject | water governance | |
| dc.subject | authority | |
| dc.subject | licences | |
| dc.subject | poverty | |
| dc.subject | smallholders | |
| dc.title | Priority General Authorisations in rights-based water use authorisation in South Africa | |
| dc.type | Journal Article |