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Water related news. If you have any news that you would like us to include on this section of our website please e-mail info@safewater.org
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UN assembly asserts water rights, some disagree |
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Written by Patrick Worsnip
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Wednesday, 28 July 2010 22:32 |
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly asserted a global right to water and sanitation in a resolution on Wednesday, but more than 40 countries abstained, saying no such right yet existed in international law.
Some 884 million people lack access to safe drinking water, more than 2.6 million have no basic sanitation and around 1.5 million children under age 5 die each year from water- and sanitation-linked diseases, sponsors of the resolution said.
The non-binding measure, presented to the assembly by Bolivia, said the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation was "a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights."
And in a clause that appeared to put the onus of rectifying the situation on rich countries, it called on states and international organizations to "scale up efforts" to provide drinking water and sanitation for all.
The resolution passed with 122 votes in favor, none against and 41 abstentions. The abstainers were mainly developed countries, although European Union members Germany and Spain voted for the measure.
Abstaining countries argued that an independent expert, Portuguese lawyer Catarina de Albuquerque, was due to report to the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council next year on countries' obligations related to water and sanitation.
They accused sponsors of the resolution of seeking to preempt her findings.
U.S. delegate John Sammis said the resolution "falls far short of enjoying the unanimous support of member states and may even undermine the work underway in Geneva" and charged that sponsors had rushed it through.
British delegate Nicola Freedman said London "does not believe that there exists at present sufficient legal basis under international law to either declare or recognize water or sanitation as free-standing human rights."
Washington-based advocacy group Food & Water Watch, however, backed what it called a landmark resolution.
"It's time to reach consensus that the world's poor deserve recognition of this human right without further delay or equivocation," it said in a statement that accused the United States of "obstructing recognition of the human right to water." |
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UN declares access to clean water a human right |
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Written by Gerard Aziakou
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Wednesday, 28 July 2010 22:25 |
UNITED NATIONS — The UN General Assembly on Wednesday recognized access to clean water and sanitation as a human right, a move hailed by water advocates as a momentous step toward a future treaty.
After more than 15 years of contentious debate on the issue, 122 countries voted in favor of a compromise Bolivian resolution enshrining the right, while the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and 37 other nations abstained.
The non-binding text "declares the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of the right to life."
It expresses deep concern that 884 million people lack access to safe drinking water and that more 2.6 billion do not have access to basic sanitation.
It notes that roughly two million people die every year from diseases caused by unsafe water and sanitation, most of them small children.
And it points to the pledge made by world leaders in 2000 as part of the poverty-reduction Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to reduce by half, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation.
The resolution urges states and international organizations to provide financial and technological assistance to help developing countries "scale up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable water and sanitation for all."
"This is a historic day for the world, a big step in the right direction" toward the distant goal of a water treaty, Canada's leading water activist Maude Barlow told AFP.
"It is going to mean a huge amount to our movement around the world, to local community groups fighting for water rights, water justice against governments, corporations which are not respecting their rights."
Barlow, a former senior adviser to the UN General Assembly on the water issue, said some wealthy countries abstained out of fear "that they are going to be asked to pay the price tag" or that the resolution would give "tools to their own people to use against them."
She welcomed the fact that major countries such as China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain and Brazil backed the resolution.
Of her country's abstention, she said: "We are terribly disappointed."
She said Canada's conservative government wants the right to sell water.
"They know that if they say it is a human right it will be a contradiction to want to turn it into a commodity," she added.
The resolution also welcomes the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council's request that Portugal's Catarina de Albuquerque, the UN Independent Expert on human rights obligations related to access to safe drinking water, report annually to the General Assembly as well.
De Albuquerque's report is to focus on the key challenges to achieving the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation, as well as on progress towards the relevant MDGs.
Germany's UN Ambassador Peter Wittig also hailed the resolution, although he said he would have preferred language with "a clearer message on the primary responsibility of states to ensure the realization of human rights for all those living under their jurisdiction."
And he disagreed with those member states that voiced concern about the impact of the resolution on the Geneva process led by de Albuquerque.
"We see the resolution as a complement to the ongoing process on water and sanitation in Geneva," he noted. |
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Our Director of Education, Nicole Biederbeck, was a guest speaker on the radio program “Women and Water” hosted by Michelle Mungall on May 5th, 2010 |
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Written by Adam Florizone
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Sunday, 25 July 2010 01:26 |
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McGill prof creates first accurate digital map of world's rivers |
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Written by Debra Black
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Monday, 26 July 2010 17:58 |
For Bernhard Lehner, an assistant professor in the geography department at McGill University, it seemed a daunting task: to design a detailed digital map of the world’s rivers.
But seven years and thousands of computer hours later, Lehner finally has a finished product: a global map detailing the world’s rivers, which has been posted online courtesy of National Geographic.
The project began when Lehner realized there wasn’t an accurate map of the world’s rivers. There were maps of individual country’s rivers, but not one that was seamless and covered the world where the rivers flow from one country to another. So in 2003 Lehner set out to build one.
The hydrologist and cartographer began the project when he was at the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C.
Taking NASA satellite data from 2002 that measured surface elevation of the planet, he crunched it with special software and used six computers to process all the information. He compared the picture he was getting to maps, books and even Google Earth to find any errors.
In the time it took to complete the digital river map, Lehner, originally from Germany, left the World Wildlife Fund, became an assistant professor at McGill, and also produced two children, he joked in an interview with the Star.
The world’s river pathways weren’t always his consuming passion. As a child, he wanted to be a brewer. “It is also water-related,” he mused. “I’m from Bavaria where beer is very important.”
However, he turned instead to hydrology.
“I was interested in sciences and, at the same time, people,” he said. “Water struck me as a middle ground. . . I like that mixture of applying physical sciences to solve social and environmental problems. Water is the perfect topic where you have both.”
Now that his first digital rivers map has been drawn, Lehner hopes others will use the map and its data to look at larger problems, such as the impact climate change might have on the river network.
“The real power of the map is when you link it with other data and other applications,” he said.
Originally the project began as a detailed map of the rivers and habitats of rivers in the Amazon and Congo – areas that are remote and unpopulated. That work is also on display online at the United States Geological Survey website.
Next up for Lehner: adding detail about the rivers in the northern hemisphere. “We’re working on improving Northern Canada, Siberia and Scandinavia,” he said.
Perhaps the most exciting part of the project is still to come: a map he hopes will detail not just watershed boundaries, but the size, flow and volume of the world’s rivers. |
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A Human Right Canada Rejects: Access to Clean Water |
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Written by Maude Barlow and Anil Naidoo
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Wednesday, 14 July 2010 17:22 |
(Published on Tuesday, July 13, 2010 by The Toronto Star)
On June 17, Pablo Solon, the Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations, presented a draft resolution declaring the human right to "available, safe, acceptable, accessible and affordable water and sanitation" to a closed-door consultation at the UN General Assembly that will be dealt with over the next several weeks. This is the first time the General Assembly has been asked directly to deal with this issue and it presents a huge test for the world and for Canada.
When the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights was written, no one could foresee a day when water would be a contested area. But in 2010, it is not an exaggeration to say that the lack of access to clean water is the greatest human rights violation in the world.
Nearly 2 billion people live in water-stressed areas of the world and 3 billion have no running water within a kilometre of their homes. Every eight seconds, a child dies of water-borne disease, in every case preventable if their parents had money to pay for water.
And it is getting worse as the world runs out of clean water. A new World Bank report says that by 2030, global demand for water will exceed supply by 40 per cent, a shocking prediction that foretells of terrible suffering.
For several years, international and local community groups fighting for water justice have been calling for a binding UN convention that clarifies once and for all that no one should be denied water for life because of an inability to pay, especially in light of the water markets now being set up that allow the wealthy to appropriate dwindling water supplies for private profit.
The fact that water is not now an enforceable human right has allowed decision-making over water policy to shift from the UN and governments to institutions such as the World Bank, the World Water Council and the World Trade Organization that favour a market future for water.
Support for the right to water has been steadily growing in recent years but, strangely, Canada has emerged as the leading opponent.
Canada has blocked even the most modest steps toward international recognition of the right to water and has worked behind the scenes to derail advancement toward a binding instrument. Government officials have not explained their position except to say that such a convention might force Canada to "share" its water with the United States. However, this is a complete red herring and the Harper government knows it.
No UN rights convention obliges one country to provide those rights to another country. Canada signed the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is under no obligation to provide housing, jobs, pensions or health care to everyone in the world, only to its own citizens. A rights convention obliges every country, to the best of its ability, to take steps to ensure the realization of this new right to its own citizens and to report these steps to the UN.
In Canada, that would mean principally that the government would have to clean up its act in First Nations communities where water quality is often substandard. In poorer countries, where there are deep access inequities, a right to water convention would give local communities a tool to demand water justice, challenge the existing privilege of the rich and demand public not private water services.
Far more dangerous to this country's water are the provisions of NAFTA, which give American companies rights to Canada's water, and the proposed Canada-E.U. Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which will give water corporations the right to challenge local public control of water services.
The truth is that a right to water convention at the UN would act as a counterweight to those who want to sell Canada's water for profit and is a more likely explanation of Canada's continued opposition.
The events of the next few weeks will tell if the UN will adopt this historic resolution. What will Canada do?
Will it stand with those who say no one should be denied water for life?
Or will this wealthy nation yet again take a position that would deny this most basic right to the billions without it now?
The whole world is watching.
© 2010 The Toronto Star
Maude Barlow is national chairperson and Anil Naidoo is Blue Planet Project organizer with the Council of Canadians |
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