ABSTRACT
The view that water should be considered an inalienable right stems from the fact that water is necessary for survival. At the most basic level clean potable water is needed for drinking, food preparation and hygiene. Consequently, there is an emerging consensus that all humans should be provided with the amount of water that is necessary to supply such basic needs. This chapter argues that there exists a hierarchy of water, in terms of use, and different allocation and management principles pertain to different levels in this hierarchy. It outlines the different types of water, differentiated according to their use. These uses are then ordered in a hierarchical manner, and the different allocation approaches are related to the different levels of the hierarchy. The chapter takes this approach one step further by relating the hierarchy and allocation/management principles to the sources of water, and then to the policy approaches that should be used for each combination of use and source.
