Curran, Deborah2017-03-272017-03-2720152015Curran, D. (2015). Water law as a watershed endeavour: Federal inactivity as an opportunity for local initiative. Journal of Environmental Law and Practice, 28, 53-88.https://jelp.ca/http://hdl.handle.net/1828/7855While the federal government has steadily lightened its regulatory role over aspects of federal jurisdiction that influence provincial water management, this jurisdictional space has provided opportunities for sub-national arrangements that address environmental protection. First Nations, provincial and local governments are creating collaborative ecosystem-based management regulations and initiatives that respond to the ecological governance imperatives of planning at a watershed scale, protecting environmental flows, linking decisions about land and water, and adaptive management. Ecological monitoring, watershed-scale planning, decision-making resulting from treaties, protection of riparian areas and watersheds, and water law reform in the west all feature prominently in these sub-national approaches. Any federal action in the future that affects water will be challenged to support these appropriately scaled regulations and decision-making.enArticleFaculty of Law