Presentation abstract:

The presentation focuses on the development of a collaborative governance model that protects water and communities as legal living entities. Water is the most essential element for life to flourish in our environment, acting as a powerful medium for living beings and places. Thus, an ecologically integrated approach to water sustainability and management models, that puts participation at the forefront, is paramount. Water governance cannot solely rely on a top-down approach from government officials, corporations, and world leaders, as they have failed to meet any of the global environmental goals set in the last decade (i.e. Paris agreement, Agenda 2030). This concern forms the basic premise of my research: water governance must ensure that we are responsibly and collectively contributing to a functioning and healthy water system. Given the alarming scenario at hand, the project recognizes the importance of re-evaluating the legal response of water governance from a water-centered perspective. This response is rooted in the field of environmental law, as a means of conceptualizing and constructing a water-centric system that addresses the challenges through new legal environmental foundations. The conceptual framework for the project’s methodological approach is predicated on legal research (Friedland and Napoleon, 2015), which provides the grounds for rethinking, reinterpreting, and modeling water governance through the ecological ethics of empathy, compassion, and care (Moriggi, Soini, Franklin and Roep, 2020).

Presenter:

Margherita Paola Poto

Bio: Margherita Paola Poto obtained her LLM degree in Law from the University of Turin in 2001, and in 2006 completed her Ph.D. in Public and Constitutional Law at the University of Pavia’s Department of Political Sciences. Having coordinated more than 30 international research projects worldwide, she focuses her research and academic activities along internationally acknowledged research lines, moving from a unidisciplinary approach (law) to cross-disciplinary, co-created, and community-based research. Her work critically reflects on the colonialism of knowledge production, explores the integration of science and indigenous knowledge, and addresses the gap between science and law. Her teaching portfolio includes innovative approaches to administrative law, indigenous methodology, public law for economics, critical legal thinking, as well as ethics and fraud. She has published more than 170 scholarly works, including 10 books and more than 50 peer-reviewed articles in top journals. Admitted to the Bar in Turin, Italy, in 2004, Margherita Poto is also a lawyer who has served as a legal consultant for international organizations, such as the International Training Center of the International Labour Organization (ITCILO), the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), and the World Bank. Since 2021, she has been coordinating the Project: An Exchange Program on Empathy, Compassion and Care in Water Governance from the Perspective of Integral Ecology (ECO_CARE, HKDIR Utforsk 2021-2024): https://en.uit.no/project/ecocare. Moreover, together with Mathilde Morel, she is currently involved in the research project SECURE Novel Marine Resources for Food Safety and Food Security (P.I. Edel Elvevoll).