| Field | Water law and governance |
|---|---|
| Jurisdiction | International; applied in Indonesia |
| Principal instruments | UU 17/2019 (Pasal 8 and 9) |
Water tenure is the relationship, whether defined by law or by custom, between people, as individuals or groups, with respect to water resources. The term was proposed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in a 2016 discussion paper, by analogy with FAO's definition of land tenure, and is used to describe the whole range of arrangements through which people gain access to and use water, including permits and concessions as well as customary and informal arrangements.[1][2]
The concept is broader than the formal water rights recorded by the state. The 2016 paper set out a preliminary typology that places statutory rights, regulatory licences, supply contracts and exempt small-scale uses alongside customary tenure, tenure under religious law, informal tenure and tenure that the state does not recognise.[1:1] Indonesian law, surveyed at the water resources law of Indonesia, contains several of these categories: Law 17/2019 guarantees a people's right to water that is expressly not a right of ownership, and recognises the customary rights (hak ulayat) of customary communities over water resources on stated conditions.[3][4]
CRPG has published on the concept twice: in November 2025 it reported on a journal article applying water tenure to the international law of river basins, and in May 2026 it described a poster presented at an FAO regional dialogue that treated water tenure as a matter of corporate due diligence.[5][6]
The FAO paper derived its working definition from the land tenure definition promoted by FAO, replacing land with water resources. It chose "water resources" rather than "water" in order to keep the discussion separate from the human right to water, which concerns access to water for domestic purposes, and to tie tenure to claims over specific resources such as streams, rivers, lakes and aquifers.[1:2]
Its typology divides tenure into relationships defined by formal law and relationships that are not. The formal category covers traditional and modern formal water rights, regulatory licensing, control by a water agency, water supply contracts, commonhold tenure, rights under investment contracts, small-scale free uses, exempt commercial uses, and reserves or minimum flows. The second category covers customary tenure, tenure under religious law, informal tenure, assumed and impossible rights, and unrecognised tenure.[1:3] The paper proposed that criteria of security, equity, sustainability and efficiency be used to compare tenure types, and suggested that a water tenure assessment methodology might follow.[1:4] FAO has since published work on water tenure assessment and on promoting water tenure for food security, climate resilience and equity.[2:1]
Indonesian statute does not use the term, but its water law allocates several of the relationships the concept describes. Under Pasal 8 of Law 17/2019, the people's right to water guaranteed by the state is the minimum daily basic need; the state then gives priority to daily basic needs, smallholder agriculture, and business use that supplies daily needs through drinking water supply systems, before non-business public uses and other permitted business uses. The same article states that the people's right to water is not ownership of water but a right to obtain and use a quota of water according to an allocation set by government regulation.[3:1]
Pasal 9 provides that state control of water resources is exercised with continued recognition of the hak ulayat of local customary communities and similar rights, so far as they do not conflict with the national interest and the law, and that such rights remain recognised so long as they still exist in fact and have been regulated by regional regulation.[4:1] Customary tenure is thus recognised in principle but conditioned on formal acknowledgement at regional level.
In November 2025 CRPG reported on an article in the Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law, written by researchers from CRPG, the National University of Malaysia and Uppsala University, which argued that the water tenure approach could help states implement the international norms that apply to river basins.[7][5:1] According to CRPG's account, the article used water tenure mapping to connect environmental flow obligations, the human right to water, the rights of indigenous peoples, corporate due diligence and the principle of equitable and reasonable utilisation. Its Indonesian example was the Kahayan catchment in Central Kalimantan, where the mapping found that most tenure consisted either of small-scale uses needing no licence or of customary arrangements of the Dayak Ngaju, such as protected water bodies, collectively managed canals and privately controlled transport channels.[5:2]
At the FAO Regional Dialogue on Water Tenure for Asia and the Pacific, held in Bangkok on 6 and 7 May 2026 under FAO's ScaleWat programme, CRPG presented a poster titled Water Tenure as a Sustainability Tool.[6:1] As summarised on crpg.id, the poster argued that a water permit records only a fraction of the claims on a water source, and that mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence laws in Europe and Australia, together with sustainability disclosure standards, require companies to identify non-statutory users as well. It singled out hydropower, mining and mineral processing, agribusiness, beverages, aquaculture, pulp and paper, textiles and data centres as the sectors most exposed, a point that connects the concept to mining and energy regulation in Indonesia, and it proposed that companies account for water relationally, by who is affected, rather than only by volume.[6:2]
K30[E] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Exploring the concept of water tenure, Land and Water Discussion Paper 10, Rome, 2016, glossary, executive summary and parts 3 and 6. https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/ffc35e5b-382e-4d2d-9059-d4cc442fadf3/content ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
[E] "Water tenure", FAO Land and Water, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, accessed 27 September 2026. https://www.fao.org/land-water/water/governance/water-tenure/en ↩︎ ↩︎
[P] Undang-Undang Nomor 17 Tahun 2019 tentang Sumber Daya Air, Pasal 8 ayat (1) to (7).
regulation_id UU_17_2019. ↩︎ ↩︎
[P] UU 17/2019, Pasal 9 ayat (1) to (3). regulation_id UU_17_2019. ↩︎ ↩︎
[E] "Rethinking International Water Law: CRPG Director Proposes Water Tenure Framework for River Basin Governance", crpg.id, 16 November 2025. https://crpg.id/rethinking-international-water-law-crpg-director-proposes-water-tenure-framework-for-river-basin-governance-2/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
[E] "A permit is not consent: Why water tenure is now a legal exposure", crpg.id, 16 May 2026. https://crpg.id/water-tenure-legal-exposure-bangkok-2026/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
[E] "Potential contribution of the water tenure approach to the implementation of international norms applicable to river basins", Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law, vol. 43, no. 4, 2025. ↩︎