Water as a Human Right

Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink...

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In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly explicitly stated access to clean water and sanitation as a human right.  According to the UN Special Rapporteur on the subject, maintaining this human right is a multi-faceted issue requiring multiple ways of specifying the right.  These include maintaining availability, quality and cleanliness, culturally-acceptable facilities for using the water, accessibility to all, and affordability.  However, the UN mandate does not require nations to provide direct access or piped water, nor does it proscribe privatizing water or charging for it.[1]  Discrepancies such as these complicate the definition of water as a human right.  Serious distribution and societal issues arise when accessibility is required but commodification of water is still allowed.  One such example is the current drought in California and the various uses of the sparse remaining water.

We tend to think of water use in the context in which most of us engage in it: the tap.  However, household use of water is very much a small portion of total fresh water use, accounting for a mere 10%.[2]  Industry and agriculture sectors are the two biggest consumers of water.  One such industry highlights the irony in America’s perception of water’s role and use.  From a citizen’s perspective, it is a tightly regulated necessity with an intricate infrastructure behind it.  In places experiencing drought, such as California, personal restrictions are prescribed and enforced by the government including quotas, bans, and fineable overconsumption offenses.  All for understandable reasons: maintaining an adequate supply for all citizens.  These ostensibly beneficent and equitable provisions crumble in the private sector.  While California scrambles to develop a long-term strategy in a state with only one year’s worth of water left, industry remains unaffected by the austere measures placed on citizens.  For example, The Nestlé Corporation’s bottled water companies have carried on, “business-as-usual,” throughout the multi-year drought parching California.  In Sacramento’s fourth-straight year of drought, the company’s bottled water manufacturers have been pumping out 80 million gallons a year from its aquifers at the low price of 65¢ for 470 gallons, almost identical to the individual consumer’s price.  The company then sells the water nationally under various brand names.[3]  The water consumed during various manufacturing processes in the bottled water sector further adds to the vital resource’s depletion.  Unrestricted, unlimited distribution of a rationed resource for a company’s profit seems at odds with the public good and the entire concept of water as a human right.

Fracking has consumed massive amounts of water throughout California’s drought as well.  On average, 127,127 gallons of water yearly is used to frack a single oil well in California, compared to yearly 146,000 gallons consumed by a family of four.  Some experts posit that as the state’s fracking operations move into other types of shale even more water will be required per well.[4]  This seems like too dangerous of a proposition for citizens facing a frightening drought that has left them with just one year of water left in reservoirs.  The UN’s failure to condemn unsustainable privatization of our most vital resource is manifesting in The Golden State.    

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[1] http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Water/FAQWater_en.pdf

[2] http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Water/FAQWater_en.pdf

[3] http://www.mintpressnews.com/nestle-continues-stealing-worlds-water-during-drought/203544/

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/us/californias-thirst-shapes-debate-over-fracking.html