Water covers 90% of the earth’s surface and everyone needs more than a cup of it.
By Samantha Zaluski
Around one billion people across the world only have access to dirty and unsafe drinking water. A growing movement is making a huge effort to make clean water accessible a universal human right because of the increasing scarcity of fresh water. This decrease in resources is due to climate change and population growth. Guaranteeing an individuals’ right to have access to water is now a constitutional or legal provision in approximately thirty countries, many more than just a couple a few years past. Determining that water is a right could give populations a mechanism to use to counter their government. The article “Is access to clean water a basic human right?” by Yigal Schleifer raise many questions including need versus right, public versus private use, public versus private delivery of water and ownership across political boundaries.
The need for something and the right to something implies different things. Dictionary.com states, a need “is to be necessary” and human right is “any basic right or freedom to which all human beings are entitled and in whose exercise a government may not interfere”.A need is something that is necessary, and a human right is a need that cannot be interfered with by the government. As for water, it is essential for life and without it humans cannot survive. Therefore water is a right and should be accessible to all, and governments should not be permitted to interfere with this need.
Water is used both publicly, by individuals and the governments that represent them, and privately by businesses. Finding the right balance of public and private use is the key. Since there is only so much water, the amount used must be shared by these two groups, with the priority however going to individuals. Not until all individuals have sufficient water, should water be given to businesses.
Political boundaries are often made without regards to how water flows. Most rivers pass through more than one country. Many lakes are owned by more than one nation. Nations have always fought over land and now increasingly over water because it is becoming such a scarce resource. Rather than water being owned by nations, I think ownership should be shared by all those nations whose land carries any portion of the lake or river. Then decisions about water use would need to be based around each water body or river, rather than by one country or another. A watershed is the region where a river or stream drains. One possibility would be that borders used for making resource decisions about water, could be based on watershed boundaries. Making boundaries more natural than political may lead to more environmentally sound ways of ensuring that everyone has fair access to the water they have the right to.
Unquestionably access to sufficient clean water is a human right. How to ensure that this right is respected is a complex management issue that will require countries to unite and begin to think differently. It is not an issue that any one country can resolve in isolation. Hopefully governments are able to show strong leadership and work towards this end, before more millions of people die from lack of clean water.
Reference
Schleifer,Yigal. “Is access to clean water a basic human right?” Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor. March 19, 2009. http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0319/p06s01-woeu.html
An interesting topic, the human right to fresh water, but I feel you could have incorporated more aspects of the textbook into your work. You discussed human rights, but sustainability (rights of future humans) could have been discussed and perhaps more emphasis could have been placed on regulation. Overall, it was a good blog. Your work was clear and well structured. Excellent!
ReplyDeleteGreat article, I am just unsure of one aspect that you bring up. You clearly state that instead of nations owning water the resources should be shared amongst all those who touch a portion of the watershed boundaries. Although the rest of your blog talks about the human right to receive water. Therefore, for the countries who do not share a portion of water how can they insure water for their entire population if there resources are insufficient? Just something to think about. Other than that great blog, quite captivating!
ReplyDeleteI liked the way your article was organized into different sections. It made it easy to understand your argument and follow your line of thought. I agree with you when you determined that water was a basic right, and I thought it was effective to compare and contrast the definitions of a right and a need.
ReplyDeleteI found your idea of having water ownership be based on watersheds fascinating. It will always be a resource argued about it, but making it natural might make people share more, and respect other's rights as well. If only we could go back to the ideas of the original inhabitants of this land; that the Earth does not belong to anyone, and we are all just stewards.
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