Is Water a Human Right?

On July 28, 2010, the United Nation's General Assembly formally recognized the human right to water and sanitation by acknowledging that clean drinking water and effective sanitation are essential to the realization of all human rights. They did this through Resolution 64/292, which "calls upon States and international organizations to provide financial resources, help capacity-building and technology transfer to help countries, in particular developing countries, to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for all," according to the United Nations. But, this isn't the first time this human right has been recognized by the UN. In November 2002, the General Comment No. 15 was adopted by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It stated in Article I.1 that "The human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity. It is a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights." Comment No. 15 also defined the right to water as "the right of everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable and physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses." 

Sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible, and affordable. How do we define these things, or rather, how does the United Nations define these things? Are they using adequate measurements, and are they regulating these measurements to the proper and ethical degrees?

This is how the United Nations and World Health Organization define these standards, taken directly from the United Nations website...

• "Sufficient -- water supply for each person must be sufficient and continuous for personal and domestic uses. These uses ordinarily include drinking, personal sanitation, washing of clothes, food preparation, personal and household hygiene. 
• According to the World Health Organization (WHO), between 50 and 100 litres of water per person per day are needed to ensure that most basic needs are met and few health concerns arise.
• Safe. The water required for each personal or domestic use must be safe, therefore free from micro-organisms, chemical substances and radiological hazards that constitute a threat to a person's health. Measures of drinking-water safety are usually defined by national and/or local standards for drinking-water quality. 
• The World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines for drinking-water quality provide a basis for the development of national standards that, if properly implemented, will ensure the safety of drinking-water.
• Acceptable. Water should be of an acceptable color, odor and taste for each personal or domestic use. All water facilities and services must be culturally appropriate and sensitive to gender, life cycle and privacy requirements.
• Physically accessible. Everyone has the right to a water and sanitation service that is physically accessible within, or in the immediate vicinity of the household, educational institution, workplace or health institution.
• According to WHO, the water source has to be within 1,000 meters of the home and collection time should not exceed 30 minutes.
• Affordable. Water, and water facilities and services, must be affordable for all. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) suggests that water costs should not exceed 3 per cent of household income." 

The last one, affordable, made me think. Do people that live in the desert southwest have a right to affordable water? They live in a desert, an area that cannot naturally support that population of people, and they are using extensive amounts of water, much of which is highly unnecessary, especially when compared to people in developing countries who use water only as absolutely necessary for life. Do Americans have the right to affordable water even though we use much more than our share? 

Water is an intrinsic human right, because we are water. Water is the basis of all life, all life needs water to survive, so how could anyone possibly argue that it is not a human right? The real question should be, is it a corporations right? In America, corporations are treated as persons, so legally, it is a corporations right to water if it is also a human's right to water, but just because something is legal doesn't make it moral. Corporations, including industries related to manufacturing and animal and plant agriculture, use up much more than any single person's share of water, and I do not believe it is in their right to do so. The animal agriculture industry uses and pollutes a huge disproportionate share of this vital resource while millions of human beings die every year for lack of clean or accessible water. Animal agriculture accounts for nearly half of all freshwater used every year, using around 1.8 billion gallons per day. 

As the economic value for this commodity increases, companies have used this opportunity to buy up water rights on nearly every continent, creating a highly privatized industry for water. Ninety percent of water rights in the world remain public, but privatization is expanding rapidly. Water privatization has led to corruption, lack of corporate accountability, loss of local agency, weakened water quality standards, and steep rate hikes that eliminate poor people’s access to water. 

The bottling plant, located on the Morongo Band of Mission Indians’ reservation, draws spring water from Millard Canyon

Nestle is an excellent example of corruption in the privatization of water. They own or lease about 50 spring sites throughout the United States, and are unlawfully or immorally extracting water from many of these aquifers. For example, Nestle steals water from already drought-ridden Colorado. Over the next decade, "Nestlé will extract 650 million gallons of Arkansas Valley water so that every day they can load 25 trucks with 8,000 gallons of water, drive 120 miles to a bottling plant in Denver, and fill millions of plastic Arrowhead Springs water bottles to be sold in the western US."  Food Empowerment Project

Photo: Photo illustration by Michael Snyder/ The Desert Sun

Arrowhead, a brand of Nestle, is bottled on the Morongo Band of Mission Indians' Reservation, and draws spring water from Millard Canyon in California.