David Morgan: Water as an international human right - Will it make a difference? Does Canada even care?

    In recent years, there has been a growing realization of a looming ‘global water crisis’. Numerous factors – pollution, rapid industrialization and urbanization, intensive agricultural practices, and an expanding global population – have increasingly strained the world’s fresh water resources. Consequently, the number of people living without access to clean water and basic sanitation is rising on a daily basis. On July 28, 2010, the United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution recognizing “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right” (p. 2), highlighting the urgency of this crisis. Although this resolution is not legally binding for signatories, it entails a greater focus on justice and equality in the provision of water and opens the door to a future covenant on water as an international human right. Despite the potential of this movement, the Canadian government has become one of its leading opponents. This raises several important questions. Will the recognition of water as an international human right make any difference in its provision? If so, why is the Canadian government staunchly opposing this movement? This paper will explore these research questions, focusing on the debate regarding privatization and rights-based strategies, and the Canadian government’s opposition to the latter approach. 

    Based on current patterns of water consumption, it is estimated that by the year 2025 two-thirds of the global population will be confronting a water shortage (Barlow, 2007, p. 3). The effects of this crisis will be particularly felt in developing countries, whose infrastructure and state capacity is often limited in comparison to the North. Since the 1970s, international financial institutions and aid donors have emphasized the private sector’s role in overcoming the structural challenges currently faced in many developing countries. In relation to water, they firmly promoted the privatization of water services, in order to address the former inadequacies of state intervention. Proponents of this approach highlighted the efficiency and transparency of private firms, their capacity to eliminate market distortions, and their access to new technology as benefits of this market-based development strategy. 

    In practice, however, the privatization of water services has not become the “magic bullet solution” to the current crisis (Spronk, 2007, p. 127). Due to the prevailing focus of private firms on profit-maximization and cost-recovery, the price of water has generally increased under private control, with limited accountability to citizens. Households unable to afford the higher cost of privatized water have been harshly punished for non-payments, while traditional practices of collecting water – including cooperative associations, collection tanks, and private wells – have often been made illegal. The privatization of water services has therefore negatively contributed to the rising number of households without access to clean and safe drinking water.

    Due to the inequality that is often entrenched in the privatization of water services, there has been a growing movement to recognize access to water as a fundamental human right. In November 2002, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights affirmed that the right to water is implicitly contained in its International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which over 150 countries have ratified. In July 2010, the UN General Assembly approved a resolution that explicitly recognizes the right to water as a human right, thereby enabling the future development of a covenant on water rights. However, it is still unknown if states will uphold this right to water in practice. Through a comparative analysis of Bolivia and South Africa, where both countries have successfully re-prioritized water as a human need, this paper will argue that a rights-based approach can substantially improve access to water in developing countries.

Despite Canada’s prominent role in both the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and Human Rights Council, its recognition as an “idea generator” in multilateral fora (Bratt, 2007, p. 243), and its traditional commitment to “humane internationalism” (Pratt, 1989, p. 13), the country has become a staunch opponent of the recognition of water as an international human right. As this rights-based approach has had demonstrable success, as in Bolivia and South Africa, this paper will argue that the motivations of the Canadian government in this regard are primarily self-interested. Canada is predominantly concerned with protecting its water reserves, contending that an international covenant on water rights would undermine its sovereignty by requiring the country to export its water to others. However, as international covenants on human rights solely establish the responsibilities of a state to its citizens in relation to international standards, and do not authorize international enforcement of these standards, Canada would have no obligation to other states. Rather, by opposing the recognition of water rights, Canada is obstructing a rights-based approach to the provision of water in both developing countries and within its own borders, particularly in First Nations’ communities. 

This paper will begin with a cross-regional comparative analysis of the outcomes of privatization and rights-based approaches in developing countries. With references to case studies of Cochabamba, Bolivia and Nelspruit, South Africa, it will examine the effect of privatization on water prices. In both cases, private firms substantially raised the price of water, leading to mass protests and the eventual adoption of a rights-based approach to water provision. The paper will then turn to the case of Canada and its opposition to this approach. Through a comparative analysis of the obligations of past international covenants on human rights, it will reveal that the Canadian government’s stance on this issue has no legal precedent. The paper will then conclude with a look at the potential action that can be taken against the Canadian government in this regard. 



Initial Bibliography

Baer, Madeline. (2008).  The Global Water Crisis, Privatization, and the Bolivian Water War. In 

Water, Place, & Equity, edited by J.M. Whiteley, H. Ingram, & R. Perry, 196-224. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Barlow, Maude. (2007). Blue covenant: the global water crisis and the coming battle for the 

right to water. New York : New Press.

Bratt, Duane. (2007). Warriors or Boy Scouts? Canada and Peace Support Operations.” In Readings in Canadian Foreign Policy: Classic Debates & New Ideas, edited by Duane Bratt and Christopher J. Kukucha, 238-248. Toronto: Oxford UP.

Budds, J. & McGranahan, G. (2003). Are the Debates on Water Privatization Missing the Point? 

Experiences from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 15, No.2, 87-114. 

Donnelly, Jack. (2007). International Human Rights. 3rd ed. Dilemmas in World Politics. Denver: Westview Press.

Gleick, P.H., Wolff, G., Chalecki, E.L., & Reyes, R. (2002). The New Economy of Water: The 

Risks and Benefits of Globalization and Privatization of Fresh Water.  Pacific Institute 

for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security. Oakland, California.

-----. (2007). The Human Right to Water. Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, 

Environment, and Security. Oakland, California.1-5. http://www.pacinst.org/reports/human_right_may_07.pdf.

Howatt, Susan. (31 August 2006). Submission to: Expert Panel on Safe Drinking Water for First Nations. Ottawa: The Council of Canadians. 

Pratt, Cranford. (1989). Internationalism Under Strain: The North-South Policies of Canada, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Russell, A. (2010) International Organizations and Human Rights: Realizing, Resisting or 

Repackaging the Right to Water? Journal of Human Rights, Vol 9, No.1, 1-23.

Scanlon, J., Cassar, A., & Nemes, N. (2004). Water as a Human Right? Cambridge: IUCN 

Publications. 

Spronk, S. (2007). The Politics of Water Privatization in the Third World. Review of Radical 

Political Economics, Vol. 39, 126-131. 

United Nations. (28 July 2010). Draft Resolution: The Human Right to Water and Sanitation. New York: United Nations. 

Comments

[Michael Byers]

I suspect the case studies of Bolivia and South Africa won't leave you with enough time and space to do the Canadian examination as well as you'd like and should. So you might want to do the Canadian work first!

In this regard, it would be good to try and find out what the Canadian government is actually thinking in terms of the reasons for its position. I suggest that you contact Anil Naidoo, Blue Planet Project Organizer for the Council of Canadians, at: blueplanet@canadians.org

You might also want to see if the issue has come up in Question Period or any House of Commons or Senate committee meetings. The Parliamentary website takes a while to figure out but is a gold mine of information.

You're making awesome progress!