ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the findings of the case studies together to show how the constructions of the aquatic environment in water law interact and, ultimately, what happens when the aquatic environment is constructed in law as a legal subject. It explores the ‘critical relationship between concepts of ownership and agency, and the extent to which the environment is seen as an equal partner in human– environmental interactions’. The environmental water managers (EWM) are organisations that have been accorded legal personality, which includes the formal capacity to ‘bear a legal right and so to participate in legal relations’. The multiple constructions of the aquatic environment in water law mean that the competing narratives remain present, shaping conflicting responses to the activities of the EWMs. The construction of the EWMs as legal persons simultaneously empowers the aquatic environment in law and weakens the cultural values and social norms that consider the environment as worthy of protection.
