Noah D. Hall
Global water markets are now a reality. Whether water should be bought and sold, imported and exported, is a difficult and important question that raises issues ranging from human rights obligations and environmental ethics to economic liberalism and the role of corporations. It is also, for purposes of this article, totally moot. At some point in time in the recent past, most likely during my lifetime but before the turn of the twenty-first century, water went global. We do not yet know how great or terrible the implications of global water markets will be for freshwater resources and the people, communities, and environment they sustain. That is still in our hands and depends largely on how domestic laws manage and protect our freshwater resources in the era of global water markets. This article examines the challenges that global water markets present to the protection of freshwater resources under domestic law by looking at recent disputes over bottled water.
Great Lakes Law 