Water is a human right, right?

The global water justice movement is coming together around a common goal: to have water declared a human right and to have this acknowledgement enshrined at every level of government from local regulation, to constitution, to global governance.
Water is not at present a recognized human right. This has allowed decision-making over water policy to shift from the UN and governments, towards global institutions like the IMF and World Bank. Private interests favour the big water companies. The world’s water is continuing to be commodified.
This has left many millions with no legal or moral foundation on which to base their dream that they have the right to enough water for life. Shouldn’t we be saying that Life requires access to clean water, to deny the right to water is to deny the right to life? The fight for right to water is an idea that has to seriously be moved into centerplace. It has become the rallying cry of the water justice movement.
Do we want water cartels? Do we want water as human right?

Two kinds of sides on Water

The other day there was in town a senior water policy expert from Singapore. He was at a water conference, and there were questions from participants on whether it is right to privatize water. He seemed of the view that that is a good way to go. Indeed Karnataka has quietly, without telling the Press, gone with at least 3 towns the private route—giving away water rights to city wards in Belgaum, Hubli-Dharwar and Mysore, with even approval of a former chief secretary and advisor to the chief minister.

Mother Earth is a living being.

Here is a moving Declaration that was adopted by the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, in Bolivia. The Bolivian government has asked the United Nations to adopt this for all the rest of the world.

We the peoples and nations of Earth: considering that we are all part of Mother Earth, an indivisible, living community of interrelated and interdependent beings with a common destiny; gratefully acknowledging that Mother Earth is the source of life, nourishment and learning and provides everything we need to live well; recognizing that the capitalist system and all forms of depredation, exploitation, abuse and contamination have caused great destruction, degradation and disruption of Mother Earth, putting life as we know it today at risk through phenomena such as climate change: convinced that in an interdependent living community it is not possible to recognize the rights of only human beings without causing an imbalance within Mother Earth: affirming that to guarantee human rights it is necessary to recognize and defend the rights of Mother Earth and all beings in her and that there are existing cultures, practices and laws that do so; conscious of the urgency of taking decisive, collective action to transform structures and systems that cause climate change and other threats to Mother Earth; proclaim this Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, and call on the United Nations to adopt it, as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations of the world, and to the end that every individual and institution takes responsibility for promoting through teaching, education, and consciousness raising, respect for the rights recognized in this Declaration and ensure through prompt and progressive measures and mechanisms, national and international, their universal and effective recognition and observance among all peoples and States in the world.

We’d be better off not planting trees-III: The reasons for resistance

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I think it is a combination of resistance from managers and a lack of certainty on what it can mean if a manager lower down the hierarchy took that decision to make the change at one hotel, when the company’s HQ is based elsewhere in India or the world. Now who would want to incur the wrath of senior management at the corporate headquarters with a decision taken locally?

We’d be better off not planting trees-II: There’s more to it…

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I took a factor of 2.5 to cover centralized air-conditioning, the pumps, and the array of cooking and other appliances that help a 5-star hotel serve its customers. That totted up to about 4.5 million units a year. Not much as money goes… about Rs 30 lacs a month, or Rs 3.6 crore a year. I may be wrong on my hazard of these estimates, for I have gone on a certain premise of use of power in the hotel without having had the opportunity to do what one calls a ‘load analysis’.