The Multiple Legal Spaces of Water Law and Governance in Saskatchewan and Alberta.

This paper will explore the multiple legal spaces existing in the South Saskatchewan River Basin ("SSRB") in relation to water law and governance. In the face of increasing competing demands over water as a result of climate change water law and governance takes on increased importance. The jurisprudential framework of water law and water institutions in the SSRB will be compared and contrasted against the construction of the governance and rules surrounding water by Canadian citizens, water stakeholders, and institutional employees based on ethnographic research. The premise of this research is critical legal pluralism, the difference between the jurisprudential positivist view of the law as based on precedent and well established objective legal rules versus the view of law as an institution and practice established and constituted by people, practices and decisions made in a fluid, dynamic, and ever changing manner.Canada's water law evolves over hundreds of years from many different sources and influences including the riparian water laws of Britain, where laws developed on a case by case basis in a land of relative water abundance. This archaic and rigid water law has been modified and adapted (to a certain extent) separately in both Saskatchewan and Alberta to meet the needs of the western Canadian situation; however many rules and principles remain. Complicated, intricate, jurisprudential constructions of the law can be made in each province. However, water is ubiquitous, traveling between arbitrary political borders. In times of water shortage, the rules of water governance are constructed and negotiated at a certain time and in a certain natural space in an inconsistent manner. These times and spaces will be explored based on research findings of a study of Institutional Adaptation to Climate Change in the SSRB and Chile. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]