Join the ANU Institute for Water Futures for a seminar and 'brown-bag' lunch discussion with renowned US water law expert Professor Robert 'Bo' Abrams. Professor Abrams will speak about how the United States approaches water governance. After the seminar, Professor Abrams will invite attendees to reflect on the Australian situation, sharing insights and lessons learned.

The Seminar will run from 12 - 1pm followed by lunch and the discussion. A complementary light lunch will be provided. Please email waterfuturues@anu.edu.au with any dietary requirements. 

About the topic

The presentation will begin with thumbnail accounts of the three principal surface water governance regimes in the U.S. as a whole, and a quick mention of the even wider variety of U.S. groundwater law systems. An important thread in those governance frameworks and their operation is the large role of property rights and the protection they receive in U.S. law. With that as introduction, the focus will be on the more arid American west, which has strong climatic similarities to equivalent parts of Australia. There also are structural legal and important historical similarities of the two nations that make comparison particularly apt. Even allowing for distinctive differences between the current systems in the two nations, the presentation will offer a series of examples of water outcomes being achieved (good and bad) in the U.S. The examples are chosen with an eye toward transferability to Australia (including lessons learned in the bad outcome examples) as both nations face the water governance challenges imposed by the stress of climate change.

About the Speaker

Robert 'Bo' Abrams is a Professor of Law at Florida A & M University (FAMU).  He attended both Stanford Law School and the University of Michigan Law School, earning his J.D.degree from the latter in 1973. Bo has been a full-time law faculty member at three different law schools in the US for 49 years. 

 His law school teaching centers on Environmental Law and Water Law and he is a co author of books used to teach both subjects. Bo’s scholarship and editorship activities are directed principally toward water allocation. He has served in leadership capacities for the American Bar Association Water Resources Committee and other water-related groups for more than four decades.Given the frequently determinative role of law in United States water allocation matters, and the array of different legal regimes governing water under US federalism, he is versed in a wide variety of water regulatory regimes.

Some of his more recent publications address commons issues in water allocation and the challenges of hydroclimate instability resulting inboth acute shortage and damaging flood events.