Irrigation has long been a local activity in many locations around the world. In such cases, irrigation systems, usually of small or modest scale, have been constructed and operated by collections of local people operating within established, or newly created, forms of social relationships commonly used to mobilize labor, assemble capital, and apportion the results of group investment following acceptable rules.In this manner, cultivators from the valleys of northern Laos to the tributary creeks of the upper Rio Grande in New Mexico physically constructed the apparatus for water diversion and socially constructed locally recognized and locally defensible access to the appropriated water. These rules of access emerge from ongoing negotiations that both rest on and contribute to the complex cultural ideas and meanings by which people connect with one another and with their natural habitat. The rich complexity of these water access rules as well as their shrewd adaptation to the changing circumstances of the immediate surroundings are each detailed in this book’s contributions.With equal resolve, states nearly everywhere have moved to encompass these local water societies into government systems, thus transforming them into appendages of the national irrigation bureaucracy. Almost inevitably, this transformation has altered locally constructed rules of access to water, often producing state water rights that are a mere parody of the original access rules. Frequently referred to as the process of formalizing water rights, these rights almost always are less at tuned to the particularities of place and time; therefore they are less ‘fair’ in local terms and typically less defensible and secure, given local resources and experiences. Local access rules are reconstructed, sometimes negotiated, as rights within the state’s legal system. Moreover, such transformations usually are imposed by the state rather than negotiated with the parties. Inshort, as Sengupta notes in his chapter, traditional irrigation systems no longer exist in traditional settings.When local irrigation systems and state irrigation bureaucracies are entangled—now the case almost everywhere as issues of water scarcity and quality expand—how should customary rules of access to water be treated in the new local-state entity? What actions should local water users take to defend their sometimes long-standing arrangements against new claims? What should the state do to respectactions taken locally while also trying to balance contemporary needs and opportunities? As suggested in the title of this book, the editors believe the answer lies in negotiating and in water rights.A major contribution of this volume is to document how frequently negotiation has been the methodology applied by water users on the ground and to demonstrate the successful outcomes that have occurred. But we also learn that negotiation is an approach underemployed by the state, though it may have much to contribute as we move toward increasingly competitive water use situations.The second part of the answer, water rights, raises more questions for future consideration. As I understand the suggestion, it is for state and local actors to give customary rules of access, through negotiation, the accoutrements of state-guaranteed water rights.That is, to get along in the modern state, traditional water access rules should be dressed up as state-sanctioned water rights.It is an appealing and potentially powerful solution and one instep with the late 20th century discussions of human rights world-wide, the role of markets in allocating all sorts of goods, as well as the notion of universal and standard principles of behavior. But there are three questions that require examination as this water rights approach is executed: One—how can state legal processes formulate water rights laws that sufficiently capture the nuances, conditionality, and resilience of customary water access practices? Two—what are the minimal capabilities (judicial, executive) that a state must have to ensure that state water rights will serve local people and their water needs adequately? Three—are there modern institutional forms other than water rights that a state could use to protect local irrigation investments while also providing opportunities for the future for all citizens?

In this book the reader will find much on which to build as water users, policymakers, and researchers continue searching for better solutions to the world’s increasingly complex water problems.