Pollution, Access, and Binary Division: Water Activism and a Human Right to Water

Abstract

Water pollution, whether from point sources (e.g. Deepwater Horizon oil spill) or nonpoint sources (e.g. quotidian stormwater runoff), constitutes one of the most pressing issues of global ecological health faced today. Inadequate access to safe and sanitary supply of fresh water causes over 3 % of all human deaths worldwide—and is the leading cause of death among children under 5 years—while freshwater animal species face an extinction rate five times that of terrestrial animals. Although developing nations bear the brunt of insufficient access to clean water, problems of accessibility are less likely to impact the developed and postindustrial world unless they affect agricultural production (e.g. droughts that crippled Midwestern US farmers in 2012) or recreation (e.g. the closure of unsustainable golf courses). With growing climate change and the ongoing proliferation of neoliberalism, issues of water pollution and water scarcity are increasingly likely to collide. This chapter considers do-it-yourself (DIY) innovations and the activist movements that are representative of the efforts to combat nonpoint source water pollution and water scarcity, and the ways in which the logics of neoliberalism undercut those efforts through the criminalization and marginalization of healthy water-use habits. This chapter describes the connected issues of drought in the Global North and water pollution in the Global South and explores the myriad ways in which the privatization of water, the removal of community-based controls on water supplies, and the criminalization of sustainable water practices and technologies jeopardize not only water access but also global water quality itself. Finally, this chapter looks to emerging human rights discourses of water that highlight the interconnectedness of issues of water access and water pollution, noting that green criminology can potentially turn to the human rights perspective in order to gain a more holistic understanding of global water issues.