ABSTRACT
This chapter uses the specific domain of water to trace the rise and fall of
the dominant paradigm of global environmental governance during the
Rio-to-Johannesburg period. The chapter also explores some possible post-
Rio approaches to global environmental governance. Water was not a cen-
tral theme at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development
(UNCED), but a wide array of post-UNCED initiatives to promote ‘‘sus-
tainable water governance’’ illustrate the core assumptions and principal
limitations of the Rio model in action. Water is also an arena in which alternative models have begun to emerge. These various approaches to gov-
erning water often embody dramatically different understandings of authority
relations, and construct the transnational dimensions of the world’s water
challenges in dramatically different ways. As I will argue below, a principal
flaw of the Rio model has been its failure to recognize and engage transna-
tional socio-environmental controversies about ‘‘local’’ problems of natural
resource management. As a result, approaches to governing water that
recognize and engage such controversies as they spill across borders are of particular interest.
