Biography
Erum K. Sattar received her Doctorate in Juridical Sciences (S.J.D.) from Harvard University where her dissertation committee consisted of Professors Mark Tushnet, James Salzman and Amartya Sen. The late Professor John Briscoe was also a member of her committee. Her doctoral research spanning law and policy focused on issues of water federalism and trans-boundary water sharing in the Indus River Basin.
At the Friedman School and the Tufts Institute of the Environment, Dr. Sattar leads and teaches in the multidisciplinary Sustainable Water Management Program (SWM) that draws together colleagues and disciplines from across Tufts University. Her current research is focused on the impact of climate change as it disrupts water availability and the legal and institutional structures that societies need to design to adapt to growing environmental stresses ranging across floods, a warming climate, and long-term droughts. Her work is centered on studying water both as a physical as well as a historically constructed shared and governed resource that has significant implications for economic development and political economy, food security, political systems and migration patterns, and the stability of ecosystems.
Education:
Harvard Law School, SJD, 2017
Harvard Law School, LLM, 2010
Queen Mary, University of London, LLM, 2008
University of London LLB, 2007
Course (co-taught):
NSWM 0205 Water: Economics, Law, Negotiation and Policy
Publications
Can Small Farmers Survive?: Problems of Commercializing the Milk Value Chain in PakistanJournal Of Food Law & Policy (Volume Sixteen, Number Two - Spring 2020, University of Arkansas School of Law)
Comparing Colonial Water Legacies: Flow and Stagnation in Legal DevelopmentBuffalo Environmental Law Journal ((Buffalo Environmental Law Journal, Volume 29, Edition 1, Fall 2021)
Ways forward to improve water security in PakistanWater Resources of Pakistan: Issues and Impacts (Stephen Davies, Muhammad Arif Watto, Erum Sattar) ((Muhammad Arif Watto, Mitchell Michael, Safdar Bashir eds., Springer, 2021)
Rivers of Money: American Expert Influence on Pakistan's Water EconomyCapitalism and Diplomacy: The Political Economy of U.S. Foreign Relations in the Twentieth Century ((Christopher Dietrich ed., University of Pennsylvania Press, May 2022)
Governing Water Ethically – A Shifting WaterscapeResearch Handbook on Energy Law and Ethics ((Rosa Lastra and Malik Dahlan eds., Edward Elgar Publishing - Environmental Law series, 2022)
Political Economy of WaterWater Policy in Pakistan (Erum Sattar) (Mahmood Ahmad ed., for Global Issues in Water Policy, Ariel Dinar, Series Editor, Springer, 2022)
Water Treaties: National and International Water-SharingWater Policy in Pakistan (Azeem Shah and Erum Sattar) ((Mahmood Ahmad ed., for Global Issues in Water Policy, Ariel Dinar, Series Editor, Springer, 2022)
Climate Change and the Political Economy of WaterEdward Elgar Research Handbook on Political Economy and Law (Ugo Mattei and John Haskell, eds., 2024)
Evolution of Water Institutions in the Indus River Basin: Reflections from the Law of the Colorado RiverUniversity of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 715 (Erum Sattar, Jason Robison & Daniel McCool) (2018)