Groundwater Law and Management : The Asia (IWMI)-Kansas Program

In the Fall 2006, the University of Kansas (KU) School of Law and the Office of International Programs collaborated with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), headquartered in Sri Lanka, on a program to train professionals in water law and groundwater management. IWMI sent one group of water experts to KU and another to the Center for Comparative Water Polices and Law in South Australia. The Kansas group, comprised of six professions (scientists and administrators) from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and China, spent three weeks in Kansas leaning about Kansas water law, water rights, groundwater management, and culture. Multi-disciplinary lectures were given by KU professors. The group took field trips to the state capital in Topeka to meet government officials and to southern and western Kansas to visit various projects and hear explanations by local water professions: groundwater management district managers, city water officials, farmers, industrial water users, and other university professors. Dinners in private homes, a KU basketball game, a choral concert, and a visit to the Nelson Art Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, complemented the scientific and legal part of the program. The Asian experts also lectured on the water law, hydrology, and groundwater management situation in their respective countries. The article describes the project in detail and makes some comparisons in water law and management in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal with Kansas