Do you have a right to water?
Is access to clean water a basic human right?
ISTANBUL, Turkey – With fresh water resources becoming scarcer worldwide due to population growth and climate change, a growing movement is working to make access to clean water a basic universal human right.
But it’s a contentious issue, experts say. Especially difficult is how to safely mesh public-sector interests with public ownership of resources – and determine the legal and economic ramifications of enshrining the right to water by law.
“It’s an issue that is snowballing,” says Tobias Schmitz, a water-resources expert with Both Ends, a Dutch environmental and development organization. Some 30 countries have a constitutional or legal provision ensuring individuals’ access to water, up from a handful a few years ago, he says.
The United States – along with Canada, China, and several other nations – has so far refused to recognize the human right to water.
There are concerns among some countries – based on a misconception, experts say – that enshrining a universal right to water would force them to share their water resources with other nations.
China, for instance, is struggling just to provide its rising population with enough water. Rapid industrial growth and urbanization have taken a toll on the country’s water supply, with underground sources quickly drying up. </em>
What an inane topic for debate. Of course everyone has a right to the water below their feet- only lawyers and unethical businessmen would ponder differently, and that’s because they stand to make a dollar off it. If you live in an area without water, move. If you live in an area that has water and it doesn’t get to you, shoot somebody in the face. Why do you think we were dropped on this planet and surrounded by clean water and breathable air? To sustain life.
Not to sustain the greed of people such as T.Boone Pickens- a man who “owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more.” How has a society allowed people to “own” water? If this jackass could engineer a way to suck air out of a city and sell it back to the people he would.
And our short-sighted, “The business of America is business” fools would let him. We’re truly too stupid to live.
