La The Paraguay-Paraná Waterway as a corpus iuris aquarum

Abstract

The interest aroused by the public tender and subsequent concession of the Paraná – Río de la Plata and Magdalena waterway, gives us the opportunity to talk about the Paraguay-Paraná rivers from the legal point of view and, more emphatically, from the triple perspective of Public International Law, Water Law and Environmental Law. These three branches of the legal encyclopaedia will be the theoretical framework on which this paper is based. The international perspective is justified because the Paraguay-Paraná waterway is part of a transboundary basin among five countries that, in turn, are members of the Mercosur (for which Bolivia is in process of full membership). The environmental approach is a key factor since it is one of the rights and guarantees enshrined in each riparian’s National Constitution. The specific objective of this research is to scrutinize the degree of coherence and robustness of this array of regulations and, therefore, to deduce the extent to which they are a corpus iuris aquarum applicable to the Paraguay-Paraná waterway.