In this house we believe: Black Lives Matter, Women’s Rights are Human Rights, No Human is Ilegal, Science is Real, Love is Love, Water is Life, Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere—“We Believe” yard sign
Is there a human right to water? The UN thinks so. In its July, 2010 Resolution 64/292, the UN General Assembly recognized a human right to water and sanitation. The Resolution read as follows:
Sufficient. The 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 colour, odour and taste for each personal or domestic use. [...] All water facilities and services must be culturally appropriate and sensitive to gender, lifecycle 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 metres 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 right to water is unusual among many resource-based human rights claims because it actually spells out a particular amount of water, 50-100 liters, which at the high end is about 26 gallons of water. That's a substantial amount.
The human right to water and sanitation recognized by the UN suffers from the usual problems of vague second and third generation collective rights. These second and third generation rights are usually claims to resources, services, or some type of quality, like “right to education,” “right to healthcare,” or “right to a clean environment.” Because of scarcity, second and third generation rights are really claims to government action or redistribution. They are usually difficult to enforce and can easily be an excuse for governments to strip away first generation negative rights that are central to civil liberties: freedom of speech, belief, petition, the right to vote, and due process.
Taken together with other first principles and the sound elements of human rights law, there is probably something amounting to a very limited right. If a government were to close down wells to deny a group of people water that would be a violation of human rights and natural rights. Similarly, a person might have some kind of cognizable right to small amounts of water to survive and forestall dehydration. But beyond that the claim to a right to water falls short.
To be clear, striving for universal abundant clean water and reliable sanitation is a worthwhile goal, but declaring it a human right does nothing to achieve that objective. Instead of finding ways to improve infrastructure, create property rights—or even private causes of action to keep water clean—a human right to water rings hollow. Will the government of one country sanction the other because the wells and rivers because those water sources in the latter are too polluted? Especially in countries that adopt international law directly into their own national law, the UN resolution would suggest that there might be a cause of action to stop water restrictions, even in a city like Cape Town about to run dry.
But why include “Water is Life” on the ubiquitous and sanctimonious “We Believe” signs that dot the American landscape? Where does water fit in the modern left-wing cosmology? For decades climate change activists, authors, and some geoscientists have promoted the idea that water is the next resource to be contested in war, joining oil, uranium, and gold. As a result, water scarcity fits neatly within the climate change framework, and is a hook to bring in support from militaries, nationalists, and conservatives.
In most developed countries, particularly the US, water is nearly costless, costing just a few cents per gallon. To some on the left, it is offensive that water is packaged and sold in stores. It should simply be free. Water is a potentially easy way to win over skeptical minds to redistributive thinking.
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