Global experts unite to advance water tenure governance for Indigenous and local communities

The 2025 Water for Food Global Conference – held from 28 April to 2 May in Lincoln, Nebraska, United States – explored the critical role of water tenure in ensuring equitable water access for food production.

The session “The Role of Water Tenure in Achieving Fair Allocation of Water for Food” was co-organized by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) and the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), and supported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Leaders from environmental law, Indigenous advocacy, and international development came together to highlight one of the most pressing and often overlooked issues in water governance: water tenure.

Presenters emphasized the challenges faced by Indigenous peoples and local communities in securing water rights and the necessity of robust legal and governance frameworks to safeguard these rights.

The session gave room to an important lineup of speakers who outlined how secure water tenure is essential to achieving food security, climate resilience and sustainable livelihoods for rural and Indigenous communities worldwide.

Jessica Troell, Director of ELI’s International Water Program, opened the session with a foundational overview. “Water tenure,” she explained, “refers to the legal and customary relationships between people and water resources.” These relationships - often rooted in Indigenous traditions or local customs - frequently fall outside of formal legal systems, leaving communities vulnerable despite centuries of stewardship. Troell emphasized the persistent gaps between legal frameworks and on-the-ground realities. While land and forest tenure rights have seen increasing global recognition over the past two decades, freshwater tenure remains critically underdeveloped in law and policy.

Since 2016, ELI and RRI have been collaborating to develop a globally comparative water tenure assessment methodology. This framework has been applied in 15 countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America to evaluate the legal recognition and protection of community water rights.

Outcomes of the evaluations are clear:

• In many countries, Indigenous and local communities' access to water depends entirely on their land or forest rights, not on explicit recognition within water laws.
• Women’s water rights are almost entirely absent from legal frameworks. Fewer than one-third of water tenure regimes recognize women's use or governance rights—and even then, mainly under land or forest legislation.
• Water permitting systems, intended to regulate access, are often misaligned with community needs, excluding traditional users while favoring larger commercial actors.

Cora Tso, Senior Fellow at the Arizona State University and member of the Navajo Nation, shared her insights on water governance challenges in the Colorado River Basin: although 30 tribes reside in the basin, only a fraction have fully settled and enforceable water rights. Tso highlighted the complexities of navigating multiple legal systems - federal, state, and tribal - and underscored the importance of recognizing customary law and tribal governance in water management.

Barbara Schreiner, Executive Director of the Water Integrity Network, called for the decolonization of water law in Africa. In a recorded message, she urged countries to adopt hybrid systems that blend statutory regulation for large users with formal recognition of customary water tenure for small-scale irrigators.

Chloe Ginsburg, Associate Director - Tenure Tracking at the RRI, echoed these concerns in her presentation on gender and freshwater rights. Drawing on new research across 35 countries, she found that legal recognition of women’s rights to freshwater is nearly nonexistent. However, laws governing land and forest tenure may provide alternative pathways for securing these rights - if leveraged effectively.

Benjamin Kiersch, FAO’s Global Coordinator for the ScaleWat project, presented the roadmap for the Global Dialogue on Water Tenure initiated by FAO in 2023. The goal of the dialogue is to develop a set of non-binding global principles for the responsible governance of water tenure. These principles will guide national reforms, support multi-stakeholder engagement, and ensure that customary and collective water rights are recognized, respected and protected. “Secure water tenure is not just about law,” Kiersch said. “It’s about dignity, inclusion and resilience.”

Next Steps

FAO and its partners are continuing regional consultations and capacity development efforts under the ScaleWat project, with upcoming regional dialogues in Latin America, Asia, and West Africa. A zero draft of the principles for responsible water tenure governance is under review, awaiting broader stakeholder input within the coming months.