ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the domestic groundwater laws of a number of legal traditions in order to better understand the challenges involved in developing a legal regime at the international level. Groundwater resources traversing international political boundaries have been ignored in projects with international implications, consistently omitted from water and environmental treaties, and cursorily misunderstood in much of legal discourse. The earliest references in international instruments to groundwater resources appeared as indirect allusions to water emanating from wells and springs along nations' frontiers. Today, the interrelationship between surface and groundwaters has become more widely acknowledged and finds recognition in numerous bilateral treaties. The Bellagio Draft Treaty Concerning the Use of Transboundary Groundwaters is a model treaty crafted in the 1990s by an independent, multidisciplinary group of academics and international experts. The International Law Association (ILA) is a private professional membership entity founded in 1873 that has periodically issued interpretations, analyses, and recommendations of various aspects of international law.
