Exploring the Influence and Potential of Socio – Economic Human Rights on Domestic Governance: Lessons in Water Governance from around the World

Lecture Conducted by DR. NATHAN COOPER, Associate Professor, Te Piringa Faculty of Law, University of Waikato, New Zealand

The lecture series kicked off on 31st September, 2022 with Dr. Cooper starting off with a discussion on various global environmental concerns and then slowly narrowly down his topic of discussion to the issue of water scarcity and water pollution and how and why the aspect of water governance is becoming a quintessential point of discussion among countries both internally as well as on global platforms. Dr. Cooper went on to discuss about various international agreements on environment that have been signed at global platforms like the United Nation and what has been the impact of the same. The lecture by Dr. Cooper was then followed by a very fruitful question-answer session whereby Dr. Cooper answered every single question that the students had in respect of the topic of the lecture at hand. The next day, i.e. 1st November, 2022, the entire lecture was divided primarily into three sessions. In the first session, Dr. Cooper deep dived into the understanding of the various governmental structures in New Zealand whereby his discussion spanned across the three organs of their country, i.e. the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. Dr. Cooper then moved on to discussing about the maori community of New Zealand who are the indigenous people of New Zealand and he went to discuss about their presence in the governance structure of New Zealand. This session again was followed by a question-answer session. The next session that was conducted by Dr. Cooper was on dissertation researching and writing whereby Dr. Cooper elaborately explained to all the students about how one should go about researching and writing their dissertation. This session was extremely interactive session where every student has questions that they wanted Dr. Cooper to answer which he very graciously did. After this, the third and last session for the students was about the University of Waikato whereby Dr. Cooper briefly explained about the scope and opportunities that his university provides. On the third day, i.e. 2nd November, 2022 there was field visit organised in wetlands of Kolkata whereby Dr. Cooper went in and asked some questions to the residents to find out about the existing water situation there, with special focus on drinking water. In this endeavour of his, he learnt that they do not have access to municipal water and have to buy water for their daily needs. This marked the end of the three-day visit of Dr. Cooper and we look forward to hosting him again. The entire sessions and field visit was co-ordinated by Dr. M.P Chengappa.