This Action4Justice Legal Action Guide provides a global perspective on addressing freshwater pollution through the law. It covers the primary causes of water contamination—ranging from agricultural runoff to manufacturing waste—and details the legal strategies available to stop polluting projects and seek remedies for affected communities. From local grassroots organizing to international human rights litigation, this document equips users with the knowledge needed to navigate the legal landscape and advocate for clean, healthy water systems.
Legal action can be used as a last resort against freshwater pollution, or as a strategic, preventative and proactive tactic. Legal rules about standing and who can bring a claim against whom vary widely across the globe, but many legal principles are fundamental and based in international law. The protection of freshwater from pollution requires engaging with a wide range of laws, public authorities, industries, citizens, and communities. In general terms, citizens and NGOs can bring claims either against regulators for failing to regulate, or against polluters for polluting. Often the first step is to complain to the regulator and try to get them to take the necessary action. Campaigns to prevent freshwater pollution and address its systemic causes can be bolstered by strategic litigation. Where individuals have suffered nuisance or health concerns due to freshwater pollution, a civil, tort, or human rights claim may be appropriate. In jurisdictions with broad laws allowing anyone to sue the government to protect the environment, for example under the right to a healthy environment, it is less necessary to show harm to residents. In jurisdictions with narrow standing rules for public interest constitutional or civil claims, strategic cases can be brought via judicial review to challenge government decisions, policies, actions, and inactions. This guide provides examples of legal challenges to address freshwater pollution from many different angles, and was designed to support NGOs, campaigners, citizens, communities, activists, and lawyers around the world in the collective pursuit of clean and plentiful water.
Freshwater is vital for life on Earth. It satisfies the basic human need for drinking water, provides a habitat for fish and other aquatic life, supports biodiversity, and is crucial for human hygiene, health and recreation. Rivers and lakes have enormous economic, social and environmental significance, with freshwater also a cornerstone of natural biodiversity. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, in SDG6, recognise the importance of freshwater by aiming to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
Freshwater is found in rivers, lakes, ponds, canals, groundwater, glaciers, snowpacks and in complex ecosystems such as páramos of the northern Andean regions. All are important sources of water for both humans and the biosphere.
Despite its importance, freshwater is under threat. The UN Environment Program (UNEP) has estimated that six billion people will face water scarcity by 2050 due to climate change, pollution and increasingly unsustainable consumption and production. Lack of clean freshwater is also a key factor in problems such as conflicts, refugee and displacement crises, and food shortages.
This guide sets out legal responses to one of these threats to freshwater; pollution. Globally, water scarcity is caused not only by droughts and over abstraction, but also by the progressive deterioration of water quality, which reduces the amount of water available that is safe to use.
Founded by lawyers who wanted to do more for communities, Action4Justice is a charity committed to legal action for social justice and has created this legal guide to assist campaigners, activists, communities, and lawyers seeking to address freshwater pollution around the world. This guide first considers the causes and solutions of freshwater pollution, and explores how legal action can help bring about those solutions. Where effective governance (such as strong policies, regulations, and enforcement) fails to protect freshwater, legal action may be appropriate. Oftentimes, litigation (or the threat of litigation) can make your campaigning more effective.
Legal action to protect the environment is most effective when combined with a campaign, which maximises public pressure on polluters and authorities. When taking legal action as part of your campaign, reach out to civil society organisations and the press in order to maximise media attention and work together with valuable partners who can help amplify your efforts.
Political campaigning tactics can also include:
Legal action may be just one part of a wider campaign, but it may turn out to be the most effective part, because with legal action you can ask a judge to order changes to happen. For that reason, it often makes sense to design your campaign with the eventual legal action in mind.
Before deciding whether to take legal action as part of your campaign to improve water quality, it is useful to consider the actual causes of freshwater pollution and what solutions exist. The main causes of water pollution are agriculture, human settlements, and industries. Solutions include reducing, or mitigating, the pollution, and remediating, or restorative, measures to clean the water. Mitigating and remedial measures include:
Strong policies, economic incentives, regulations, enforcement, and rights-based legal frameworks, provide not only for better protection of freshwater, but also give leverage to campaigners to pressure authorities to enforce regulations and policies. Rights based legal frameworks like human rights, the right to a healthy environment, and rights of nature can also help fill the gaps where regulations are not enforced or not strong enough, as lawsuits can be brought against the authorities for failing to protect a river’s rights or the rights of citizens to have a healthy environment and clean water. International quasi-legal forums and complaints mechanisms can also be useful to put pressure on governments. Preventive applications for declarations of breach and injunctions to suspend polluting activities pending environmental impact assessments and child impact assessments can be more immediately impactful as well as cheaper and quicker than trying to use the law to stop and clean up pollution after the fact.
Recent decades have seen an increase in legal frameworks that improve water governance and water rights including: the right to a healthy environment, rights of nature, and laws against ecocide. However, this guide will not address campaigning or advocacy for stronger policies or law reform. Instead, this guide focuses on the use of legal action as part of a wider campaign strategy to hold authorities accountable and improve freshwater.
This guide does not deal with other important and related issues such as the right to water; the general management and governance of freshwater, as addressed in the multifaceted Water Action Agenda adopted at the 2023 UN Water Conference; or issues with dams and other hydroelectric projects which may directly or indirectly affect rivers and lakes. It does not deal with the ocean or coastal areas, although these face many issues similar to those concerning freshwater, so this guide may still be useful for dealing with coastal areas.