ABSTRACT
Urban governance impacts how residents experience the human right to water. This chapter utilizes Johannesburg, South Africa, and Dublin, Ireland, as examples because their approaches to the right to water mirror broader hegemonic trends in water governance and are illustrative for cities around the world. The human right to water has increasingly come to the forefront of international policy and academic debates; particularly, grappling with how best to realize the right in contexts of water scarcity and harsh economic conditions. The “human right to water” for urban citizens is a concept rife with plural meanings. The chapter also utilizes a legal pluralism framework to explore the connection between different parts of water governance; international human right to water, state protections, and local implementation. It concludes that urban water governance benefits from both substantive constitutional protection and a robust normative framework to protect and shape the right.
