Exploring the Textured Landscape of Water Insecurity and the Human Right to Water

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Austria P. Martinez and P. van Hofwegen, eds., Synthesis of the 4th World Water Forum (Mexico City: Comisión Nacional de Agua, 2006), 24. 2. UNICEF, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (NY: UNICEF, 2010). 3. For example, some First Nations reserves have been on water advisories for nearly a decade, and with recent statistics reporting that more than one hundred reserves are on water advisories. Health Canada, First Nations, Inuit, and Aboriginal Health, Drinking Water and Waste Water (2011), at http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fniah-spnia/promotion/public-publique/water-eau-eng.php (accessed 13 November 2011). 4. IPCC, Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, eds. M. L. Parry, O. F. Canziani, J. P. Palutikof, P. J. van der Linden, and C .E. Hanson (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 5. UNDP, Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis (NY: UNDP, 2006). 6. Sultana argues that water collection plays an important social role in women's lives in many cultures, affording them an acceptable role within the public sphere outside of the household or family compound. Farhana Sultana, “Fluid Lives: Subjectivities, Gender and Water in Rural Bangladesh,” Gender, Place & Culture 16(4) (2009): 427–444. Many studies have also found, however, that water collection disrupts girls' education and unsafe sanitation exposes girls to the threat of violence. See UN Water, Gender, Water and Sanitation: A Policy Brief (NY: UN, 2008). 7. UN, Millennium Development Goals (Geneva: UN, 2000). 8. Mechanisms for monitoring progress on the MDGs include annual UN global reports, five-year comprehensive reviews, and country-level MDG reporting. The UN General Assembly reviews progress annually. At regional and national levels country monitoring reports are prepared and reviewed. See UNDP, The Path to Achieving the Millennium Development Goals: A Synthesis of MDG evidence from around the world (New York, NY: UNDP, 2010). 9. See, for example, Patrick Bond, “Global Governance Campaigning and the MDGs: From Top-Down to Bottom-Up Anti-Poverty Work,” Third World Quarterly 27(2) (2006): 339–354. 10. Julie Aubriot, The Right to Water: Emergence, Definition, Current Situation and Stakeholders' Positions (Paris, France: ACF International Network, 2008), 6; Karen Bakker, “The “Commons” Versus the “Commodity”: Alter-Globalization, Anti-Privatization and the Human Right to Water in the Global South,” Antipode (2007): 430–455; and Karen Bakker, Privatizing Water: Governance Failure and the World's Urban Water Crisis (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010). Protests at the World Water Forums in recent years, especially in 2006 and 2009, illustrate this growing dissatisfaction and call for a human right to water. See Environment News Service, World Water Forum Opens to Scarcity Fears and Protests, March 16, 2009, at http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2009/2009-03-16-01.html (accessed 1 November 2011). 11. Water expert Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute argues there has long been a basis in international law, covenants, and declarations for recognizing a human right to water, including in treaties protecting women and children. Peter Gleick, “The Human Right to Water,” Water Policy 1(5) (1999): 487–503. See also Malgosia Fitzmaurice, “The Human Right to Water,” Fordham Environmental Law Review 18 (2006–2007): 537. 12. Luis Veiga da Cunha, “Water: A Human Right or an Economic Resource?,” in M. Ramin Llamos et al., eds., Water Ethics (London: Taylor and Francis Group, 2009), 97–113, 100. The quantity of water is not necessarily easy to determine because it can vary according to cultural practices and behaviors and geographical location. Generally, it is assumed that a person needs a minimum of 20 liters per day—and qualitatively, it should be clean and safe with no human health risk from consuming it. See Note 5. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends 50 liters for drinking, hygiene, and food preparation. 13. Comment 15 (2002) states: “The right to water clearly falls within the category of guarantees essential for securing an adequate standard of living, particularly since it is one of the most fundamental conditions for survival. The right should also be seen in conjunction with other rights enshrined in the International Bill of Human Rights, foremost amongst them the right to life and human dignity.” General Comment No. 15, United Nations Document E/C.12/2002/11 (NY: UN, 2002). 14. Bolivia played a critical role leadership role at the UNGA. One Bolivian dignitary explained that their frustration with a lack of progress at the 2009 Copenhagen climate change negotiations helped spur action by a group of countries especially vulnerable to climate change impacts to propose this resolution. See Joyeeta Gupta, Rhodante Ahlers, and Lawal Ahmed, “The Human Right to Water: Moving Towards Consensus in a Fragmented World,” Review of European Community and International Environmental Law 19 (3) (2010): 294–305. 15. ODI, Millennium Development Goals Report Card: Measuring Progress across Countries (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2010). 16. UNICEF and WHO, Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation: Special Focus on Sanitation (NY: UNICEF and WHO, 2008), 28. 17. Ibid, 8. 18. UN General Assembly, Human Rights Council, Promotion and Protection of all Human Rights, Civil, Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, including the Right to Development. Catarina de Albuquerque, Report of the independent expert on the issue of human rights obligations related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation, 25 February 2009, 9. 19. P. H. Gleick, H. Cooley, M. J. Cohen, M. Morikawa, J. Morrison, and M. Palaniappan, eds., The World's Water 2008–2009, The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2009). 20. UNDP, The Path to Achieving the Millennium Development Goals: A Synthesis of MDG Evidence From Around the World (NY: UNDP, 2010). 21. Helen Ingram, “Beyond Universal Remedies for Good Water Governance: A Political and Contextual Approach,” in A. Garrido and H. Ingram, eds., Water for Food in a Changing World (NY: Routledge, 2011), 241–261. 22. Ibid. 23. Margaret Wilder, “Water Governance in Mexico: Political and Economic Apertures and a Shifting State–Citizen Relationship,” Ecology and Society 15(2) (2010): 22. 24. Karen Bakker, Privatizing Water: Governance Failure and the World's Urban Water Crisis (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010). 25. Community water systems in the southern zone actually began before the privatization scheme was tried and failed. Thousands of migrants poured into Cochabamba from rural mining areas in the 1980s after the mines they worked in were closed or privatized. The Americas program reports that the southern part of the city had been declared a “red zone”—meaning the municipal water utility, SEMAPA, did not provide any water to the area. The early water committees—in accordance with the usos y costumbres (customs and uses) used in Andean villages to manage common-pool resources—dug their own wells and dug trenches from neighborhood homes to the well site, then laid pipe to carry the water. 26. Susan Spronk and Jeffrey R. Webber, “Struggles against Accumulation by Dispossession in Bolivia: The Political Economy of Natural Resource Contention,” Latin American Perspectives 34(2) (2007): 31–47; Raúl Zibechi, “Cochabamba: From Water War to Water Management,” Americas Program, 27 May, 2009. Available at http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/1723 (accessed 18 October 2011); and Rocio Bustamante, “The Water War: resistance against privatisation of water in Cochabamba, Bolivia,” Revista de Gestión del Agua en América Latina 1(1): 37–46 (Jan.-June 2004). 27. Ibid. 28. The co-management project is funded by a $USD 4 million grant from the government of Bolivia and the European Union, and retains primary control for design and execution of the water system within ASICA-Sur and the water committees, in cooperation with SEMAPA. ASICA-Sur and the water committees, represented by a three-person consulting committee selected by the water committees, will be the “main agents” for management and project execution in the 22 water systems included in this project. 29. Maria Carmen Lemos and Arun Agrawal, “Environmental Governance,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 31 (2006): 297–325. 30. UNICEF, An Evaluation of the PlayPump® Water System as an Appropriate Technology for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Programmes (NY: UNICEF, 2007). 31. Andrew Chambers, “Africa 's Not-So-Magic Roundabout,” 24 November, 2009. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/24/africa-charity-water-pumps-roundabouts (accessed 1 November 2011); Frontline/World South Africa, “Troubled Water,” 29 June 2010. Available at http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/southernafrica904/timeline_tw.html (accessed 1 November 2011); and Jean Case, The Painful Acknowledgement of Coming up Short, Case Foundation (2010). Available at http://www.casefoundation.org/blog/painful-acknowledgement-coming-short (accessed 1 November 2011). 32. See Frontline's discussion of the rise and decline of PlayPumps® and related links to organizations that have refocused their use of the technology only for schools. Available at http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/southernafrica904/timeline_tw.html#links (accessed 1 November 2011). 33. Gary Wolff and Peter H. Gleick, “The Soft Path for Water,” in The World's Water 2002–2003 (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2002), 1–32. See also B. van Koppen, S. Smits, P. Moriarty, F. Penning de Vries, M. Mikhail, and E. Boele, Climbing the Water Ladder: Multiple-Use Water Services for Poverty Reduction (Sri Lanka: IWMI, 2009). 34. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment 15, (2002) E/C.12/2002/11, para. 2. Available at http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cescr/comments.htm (accessed 1 November 2011). 35. Amy Hardberger, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Water: Evaluating Water as a Human Right and the Duties and Obligations it Creates,” Northwestern University Journal of International Human Rights 4 (2005–2006): 331, 355. 36. According to Blue Planet, at least 165 states have signed declarations recognizing the right to water and at least 106 States have signed up to declarations recognizing the right to sanitation and water. See Blue Planet Project, “International Declarations and Recommendations on Water and Sanitation” (ND). Available at http://www.blueplanetproject.net/RightToWater/Declarations.pdf (accessed 1 November 2011). 37. In the historic 2004 vote, more than 60% of the Uruguayan people voted to amend their constitution to make water a human right. The grassroots movement, led by a network called the National Commission for the Defence of Water and Life, composed of the trade unions, human rights groups, and environmental organizations, was a direct response to the privatization of water services in Uruguay, which began around 2000 and was criticized for resulting in poorer quality, exclusion of access, and environmental damage. Carlos Santos and Alberto Villarreal, “Uruguay: Victorious Social Struggle for Water,” in Brid Brennan, Ilivier Hoedeman, Philipp Terhost, and Satoko Kishimoto, eds., Reclaiming Public Water: Achievements, Struggles and Visions from Around the World (Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, 2007): 173–179. But then, less than a year after the constitutional amendment was approved, the Tabaré Vázquez government produced an executive resolution stating that the private companies that signed concession contracts before the referendum would be allowed to continue their contracts. As Santos and Valdomir argue, the Uruguayan government refused to follow through on the popular demand for fear that the companies would retaliate by bringing lawsuits against the government in international court. The companies' investments are protected by bilateral investment treaties that are backed by powerful means of enforcement through investor-state arbitration. See http://ourwatercommons.org/water-solutions/case-2-legal-efforts-guarantee-right-water-latin-america (accessed 13 November 2011). 38. Recognizing the urgency of climate change and building from the larger international perspective developing around the human right to water, Mexico's legislature advanced an amendment to Article 4 of the Mexican Constitution in September 2011, which recognizes a “right of all to water that is sufficient, healthy, accessible, … for domestic and personal use.” The action is the result of several years of work by the Coalition of Mexican Organizations for the Right to Water, a network of organizations dedicated to pursuing a human right to water in Mexico. 39. See Farhana Sultana and Alex Loftus, eds., The Right to Water: Politics, governance and social struggles (NY: Earthscan, 2012), which includes case studies from several regions and countries of the world including Europe, the Middle East, New Zealand, South Africa, India, and south and central America. 40. See Republic of South Africa (RSA), “The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act,” 108, of 1996, Chapter 2, Section 27; RSA Water Services Act, 108, of 1997; and RSA, National Water Act, 36, of 1998. 41. Marcelle Dawson, “The Cost of Belonging: Exploring Class and Citizenship in Soweto 's Water War,” Citizenship Studies 14(4) (2010): 381–394. Gcin'amanzi means “conserve water.” 42. The case was in part a reaction to the deaths of two children in a fire in 2002 when their shack burned and the prepayment meter system failed to provide water to extinguish the fire. More broadly, the turn to the legal strategy was a reaction to “state coercive force characterized by countless arrests, injuries, high bail amounts, and harsh sentences” to crush community resistance to the prepaid meter. Communication with Dale T. McKinley, Johannesburg, South Africa, November 11, 2011. 43. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa guarantees the right of citizen access to sufficient water (Act 108 of 1996, section 7(2)): “everyone has the right to an environment that is not harmful to their health or well-being … everyone has the right to have access to … sufficient water. 44. Rebecca Bates, “The Road to the Well: An Evaluation of the Customary Right to Water,” Review of European Community and International Environmental Law 19(3) (2010): 282–293, 290. 45. The meters allow households a free basic monthly allowance of 6,000 litres of water before shutting off automatically, requiring residents to pay for additional water. Raffaella Delle Donne, Water Meters for the Poor: New Name, Old Problems.InterPress Service News Agency, 22 March 2009). Available at http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46226 (accessed 1 November 2011). 46. Twani Mabhelandle, Western Cape Water Caucus, presentation at Cape Town Hearings on Climate Change, Food and Water, hosted by Oxfam International and Environmental Monitoring Group, Rondebosch, 6 October 2009. Available at http://www.docstoc.com/docs/74392740/Proceedings-of-the (accessed 1 November 2011). According to some reports, there are frequent malfunctions with the meters that disturb the flow of water for days, having detrimental effects on households and small businesses. WASH News Africa, South Africa: Cape Town Water Meters Leave Poor High and Dry, 15 July 2010. Available at http://washafrica.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/south-africa-cape-town-water-meters-leave-poor-high-and-dry/ (accessed 1 November 2011). 47. J. Dugard and M. Langford, “Art or Science: Synthesising Lessons from Public Interest Litigation and the Dangers of Legal Determinism,” South African Journal on Human Rights on Public Interest Litigation 27 (2011): 39–64; and J. Dugard, “Civic action and the legal mobilisation: The Phiri water meters case” in J. Handmaker and R. Berkhout, eds. Mobilising Social Justice in South Africa: Perspectives from Researchers and Practitioners(The Hague: ISS and Hivos, 2010): 71–99. Communication with Jackie Dugard, Johannesburg, South Africa, 17 November 2011. 48. See, for example, the Mvula Trust, established in 1993, initially as a three-year project to help alleviate the critical situation in the early 1990s by establishing a quick mechanism for funding community-driven water and sanitation projects. See Mvula Trust at http://www.mvula.co.za (accessed 15 September 2011). 49. D. McDonald and G. Ruiters, The Age of Commodity: Water Privatization in Southern Africa (London: Earthscan, 2005). 50. See J Karamoko, “Service Delivery Protests: Less Frequent, More Violent,” Local Government Bulletin, 13(3) (2011): 10–13; and research around North West Province village of Sannieshof where local residents took over the responsibilities of the municipality as a result of bad service delivery. See C. Gouws, I. M. Moeketsi, S. Motloung, J. W. N. Tempelhoff, G. van Greuning, and L. van Zyl, “SIBU and the Crisis of Water Service Delivery in Sannieshof, North West Province,” TD: The Journal for Research in Southern Africa 6(1) (2010): 25–56. 51. According to South Africa 's 2010 Millennium Development country report, “There was a progressive increase (4%) in the percentage of households with access to water supply from a safe source between 2002 (88.7%) and 2007 (92.7%), with slight dip in 2008 (92.0%), and then a rise in 2009 (92.4%). UNDP, Millennium Development Goals, Country Report 2010 (NY: UNDP, 2010), 93. 52. UN OHCHR, Human Rights and the Millennium Development Goals in Practice: A Review of Country Strategies and Reporting (NY: UN, 2010), 13. 53. Larry A. Swatuk, “The State and Water Resources Development through the Lens of History: A South African Case Study,” Water Alternatives 3(3) (2010): 521–536. A key limitation to extending access in Johannesburg's inner city is the requirement that only property owners are eligible for the minimum 6 kls of water and free sanitation thereby, excluding the poorest of the poor. See A. Wafer, J. Dugard, M. Ngwenya, and S. Sibanda, A Tale of Six Buildings: The Lived-Reality of Poor People's Access to Basic Services in Johannesburg's Inner City (Johannesburg: Centre for Applied Legal Studies, University of Witwatersrand, 2008). 54. Argentina has an extensive body of case law on the right to water, reflecting a broad range of issues, such as disconnection of water services by private companies, water pollution, and the lack of access, and also reveals the role of NGOs in supporting litigation and raising awareness in communities. I. Winkler, “Judicial Enforcement of the Human Right to Water—Case Law from South Africa, Argentina and India,” Law, Social Justice & Global Development Journal (2008): 1–19. 55. See Philippe Cullet, “Water Sector Reforms and Courts in India: Lessons from the Evolving Case Law,” Review of European Community and International Environmental Law 19(3) (2010): 328–338. 56. The Rights to Water and Sanitation, The Right to Water under the Right to Life: India (ND). Available at http://www.righttowater.info/progress-so-far/timeline/legal-redress/the-right-to-water-under-the-right-to-life-india (accessed 1 November 2011). 57. For a discussion of the cases, see Saby Ghoshray, Searching for Human Rights to Water Amidst Corporate Privatization in India: Hindustan Coca-Cola Pvt. Ltd. v. Perumatty Grama Panchay, Georgetown International Environmental Law Review 19 (2007): 643; and K. Ravi Raman, “Transverse Solidarity: Water, Power, and Resistance,” Review of Radical Political Economics 42(2010): 251–268. 58. Jeremiah McWilliams, “India State to Hear Claims Against Coke,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 25 February 2011. Available at http://www.ajc.com/business/indian-state-to-hear-853217.html (accessed 1 November 2011). 59. “Kerala Okays a Bill to Penalise Coca Cola,” The India Daily, 25 February 2011. Available at http://www.theindiadaily.com/kerala-okays-a-bill-to-penalise-coca-cola (accessed 1 November 2011). The legislation is in part based on the 2010 report and recommendations of a High Power Committee, which found Coca-Cola responsible for causing pollution and water depletion in Plachimada and recommended Coca-Cola be held liable for some US$48 million in damages. See India Resource Center, Recommendations of High Power Committee (ND). Available at http://www.indiaresource.org/campaigns/coke/2010/hpcrecommendations.html (accessed 1 November 2011). A similar report submitted at the same time instructed PepsiCo to cut groundwater use by two-thirds at its plant also in Kerala's Palakkad district. See “Cola Giants Criticized Amid India Water Crisis,” Bangkok Post (21 April 2010). Available at http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/asia/175345/cola-giants-criticised-amid-india-water-crisis (accessed 1 November 2011). 60. Plachimada Struggle Solidarity Committee, “A Call To Struggle … for Water … for Life,” 5 January 2010. Available at http://keralaletter.blogspot.com/2010/01/call-to-strugglefor-waterfor-life.html (accessed 1 November 2011). 61. K. Ravi Raman, “Transverse Solidarity: Water, Power, and Resistance,” Review of Radical Political Economics 42 (2010): 251–268. 62. Tom Levitt, “Coca-Cola Just Part of India's Water ‘Free-for-All,'” Ecologist (4 December 2009). Available at http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/373906/cocacola_just_part_of_indias_water_freeforall.html (accessed 1 November 2011). 63. The progress toward the MDGs has been halted because of recent food, fuel, and financial crises. S. Jahan, “The MDGs Beyond 2015,” IDS Bulletin 41 (2010): 51–59. 64. Kate Tissington, Marc Dettmann, Malcolm Langford, Jackie Dugard, and Sonkita Conteh, Water Services Fault Lines: An Assessment of South Africa's Water and Sanitation Provision across 15 Municipalities (Johannesburg, Geneva, and Oslo: Centre for Applied Legal Studies, Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, and Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, 2008), 2. 65. Pedro Arrojo, El reto ético da la nueva cultura del água: Funciones, valores y derechos en juego (Barcelona: Ediciones Paidós, 2006). According to UNDP, estimating conservatively, the direct and indirect costs associated with the deficit of water access in developing countries, like health costs, represents nine times the costs of simply providing universal access. UNDP, Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis (New York, NY: UNDP, 2006), 42. 66. J. Whiteley, H. Ingram, and R. Perry, eds., Water, Place, and Equity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008); and Erik Swyngedouw, Social Power and the Urbanization of Water—Flows of Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 67. Philip Alston, “Ships Passing in the Night: The Current State of the Human Rights and Development Debate Seen Through the Lens of the Millennium Development Goals,” Human Rights Quarterly 27(3) (2005): 755–829. 68. Communication with Carlos Santos, Uruguay, authors' translation from Spanish, 6 January 2012. 69. Francis Rose, “Water Justice in South Africa: Natural Resources Policy at the Intersection of Human Rights, Economics, and Power,” Georgetown International Environmental Law Review 18 (2005): 149; and J. Gupta, “The current status of the human right to water” in The Right to Water and Water Rights in a Changing World (Paris: UNESCO, 2011): 47–53, 48. 70. Randy Showstack, “Meeting Basic Human Needs for Water Remains Huge Challenge, Expert Says,” Eos 92(44) (November 2011): 387. 71. UN COHRE, The Significance of Human Rights in MDG-Based Policy Making on Water and Sanitation: An Application to Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Sri Lanka and Laos (Geneva: COHRE, 2009). There has been relatively limited success in some cases due to larger capacity and financial concerns and situations where economic imperatives over- ride entitlements to water and sanitation. See also endnote 52. 72. UN OHCHR, Human Rights and the Millennium Development Goals in Practice: A Review of Country Strategies and Reporting (New York, NY: UN, 2010), 28. 73. See, for example, endnote 66; and P. H. Gleick, G. Wolff, E. L. Chalecki, and R. Reyes, The New Economy of Water: The Risks and Benefits of Globalization and Privatization of Fresh Water (Oakland, CA: Pacific Institute, 2002). 74. Helen Ingram, “Beyond Universal Remedies for Good Water Governance: A Political and Contextual Approach,” in Water for Food in a Changing World, eds. A. Garrido and H. Ingram (New York: Routledge, 2011): 248.