Environmental Rights

The Right to water


The Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights has been
established with detailed provisions from which the right to water
can be inferred. Article 11 (1) establishes that the States
recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living
for himself and for his family, including adequate food. Article 11
(2) refers to State obligations related to the right of everyone to
be free from hunger, saying that States shall take measures to
improve methods of production of food by developing or reforming
agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient
development and utilization of natural resources. The right to water
could also be inferred from this part of the article. Evidently, the
most efficient development and utilization of natural resources in
order to improve methods of food production shall take into special
account aspects related to quality, distribution, and utilization of
water. Article 12 of the Covenant, which is related to t he right to
health, includes as part of the necessary steps States must take to
achieve the full realization of this right those necessary for the
reduction of infant mortality and those necessary for the
improvement of all aspects of environmental and industrial hygiene.
Article 25 of the universal declaration on human rights proclaims
that “ every one has the right to a standard of living adequate for
the health and well being of himself and of his family, including
food….” unless food were imported from other states, the right to an
adequate standard of living presumes an adequate supply of water to
sustain agriculture to the extent necessary to feed a state’s
population.

Humanitarian law: Under humanitarian law (the laws governing war)
the right to water is recognized and protected. It is a well
established rule of the law of armed conflict that the enemy’s water
supply may not be poisoned or contaminated. In this respect, Article
54, paragraph 2, of the 1977 protocol 1 addition to the Geneva
conventions, related to the protection of civilians in conflicts of
an international nature, states, “it is prohibited to attack,
destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the
survival of the civilian population, such as food stuffs,
agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops,
livestock drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation
works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance
value to the civilian population or to the adverse party, whatever
the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them
to move away or for any other motive.

In the period from 1900-1995, global water withdrawals to satisfy
demand grew by a factor of six, more than double the rate of
population growth (UN, 2002). Water scarcity in the early part of
the twenty first century could therefore create conditions similar
to those experienced in the 1970s as result of the oil shocks. This
rapid growth in water demand is due to the increasing reliance on
irrigation to achieve food security, the growth of industrial uses,
and the increasing use per capita for domestic purposes. It is
estimated that about 460 million people live in countries using so
much of their water resources that they can be considered to be
highly water stressed. A number of well known major water pollution
problems were discussed in the 1997 WMO report. Inadequately treated
contaminated water is one of the major causes of human illness.
Micro organisms found in waters such as bacteria, viruses are the
cause of many waterborne diseases. These are present in virtually
all wastes discharged, even those from most sewage treatment plants.
It is essential to treat drinking water properly to prevent illness.
In the past two decades, essential water supply services have been
provided to millions of people worldwide, saving a great many lives
and reducing illness. However the rate of supply has not kept pace
with that of population growth, and 20 percent of the world’s
population lack access to safe water supply, while 50 percent lack
access to adequate sanitation

The quality of the water used for basic needs as sanitation,
cleansing, and growing food is equally important. An example of such
water quality is a situation in Chile, in which much of the
agricultural land is irrigated with water from the same rivers into
which most domestic and industrial waste is dumped. This practice
resulted in an outbreak of cholera in 1991, largely because
Santiago, had no water treatment plants. From the point of view of
the individuals, the human right to drinking water comprises both
the right to an adequate supply of water and the right to quality
water. The State obligations correlative to this right would differ
depending on whether the right to water is understood as part of the
right to life or as part of the right to health, of the right to
food or as a proper right in itself.

Measurement of States’ compliance with their obligation to provide
safe water can be achieved in various ways. One is by measuring the
general population’s access to water. UNDP shows measures in its
annual HD Report, measure access to water. In the report, the
programme offers data in the profile of human development and in the
profile of human deprivation related to the percentage of population
with access to safe water and to the percentage of population with
access to safe water and to the percentage of population without
access. In this sense, the 1996 Human Right Development Report shows
that in countries with high human development indicators, an average
of 84 percent of the population has access to safe water (showing
100 percent for Singapore and 71 percent for Argentina). While in
countries with low human development indicators the average falls to
55 percent (97 percent for Bangladesh and 12 percent for
Afghanistan).

Another manner of measuring a State’s compliance with its obligation
of providing safe water is through the personal consequences of the
lack of access to it. For example, if a child dies because of
illness resulting from not having access to safe water such as
diarrhoea, it could be very well argued that the State has violated
his right to life. Although there are several ways of measuring and
ensuring states; compliance with their obligations related to the
rights to water, one of the first steps should be to raise awareness
about the existence of the right to water and about the importance
of this right. One very important aspect of this is to take into
account that water is a resource that remains constant and finite.



The Right to Land

The rights of national governments to exercise jurisdiction over all
lands and natural resources located within the boundaries of the
states in which they operate are widely acknowledged. This is what
accords government the authority to promulgate regulations applying
to the activities of both owners of private property and users of
common property. But beyond this, governments can and often do
assert far reaching claims to the ownership of land and associated
natural resources in the form of public property by virtue of
conquest (e.g. Russian ownership in Serbia), the exercise of royal
prerogative purchase (the acquisition of Alaska by the US),
inheritance (Canada’s inheritance of crown lands under he British
North American Act 1867), succession or some combination of these
claims. Despite t he publicity surrounding privatization, the
government Russian Federation claims most of the land base of Russia
as public property the government of Canada treats the bulk of the
country’s land base as public property evening US, widely regarded
as bastion of private property and free enterprise, the federal
government alone claims about one third of the nation’s land as
public property (Brubaker, 1984). Yet this is not the whole story
regarding systems of land tenure. Although effective control has
flowed steadily toward national governments during most of the
modern era, many small indigenous or traditional groups residing
within states and engaging in distinctive social practices have not
relinquished their claims to ownership of large tracts of land and
natural resources in the form of common property (Berkes, 1989;
Bromley, 1992). Often these claims overlap or conflict with
assertions on the part of national governments to the effect that
the areas in question are part of the public domain. Indigenous land
claims In British Columbia, for example, cover virtually all the
land area of the province.

However the concept of property encompasses a bundle of rights, and
the contents of this bundle can be allocated in any of a variety of
ways. This has given rise to lively debates about t he nature and
extent of usufructuary rights in situations where user groups have
not been granted full title to land and natural resources. Among the
most significant aspects of this debate are issues concerning the
rights of national governments to authorize consumptive uses of
forests, hydrocarbons, and non fuel minerals in areas that are
important to the conduct of longstanding subsistence or artisanal
activities featuring the use of living resources on the part of
local peoples.

Environmental issues, in any case, are best handled with the
participation of all concerned citizen, at the relevant level. At
the national level, each individual shall have appropriate access to
information concerning the environment that is held by public
authorities … and the opportunity to participate in decision making
processes. States shall facilitate and encourage public awareness
and participation by making information widely available. Effective
access to judicial and administrative proceedings, including redress
and remedy shall be provided.

Reference;

Oxfam, Right to the land,
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/where_we_work/brazil/quilombola/in
dex.htm

United Nation, General Assembly, Resolution 37/7, World Charter for
Nature, 28 October 1982

Cahill, Michael; The Environment and Social Policy, Gildredge Social
Policy, Routledge publication, 2003

The Drama of the Commons, National Academy Press, Committee on the
Human Dimensions of Global Change; Editors: E. Ostrom, T. Dietz, N.
Dolsak, P. Sterm, S. Stonich, and E. V. Weber, National Research
Council, Washington DC, 2002, www.nap.edu

Linking Environment and Social Policy, edited by Romina Picolotti
and Jorge Daniel Taillant, the Univ of Arizona Press, (2003),
www.cedha.org.ar

Stephen C. Mc Caffrey, A Human Right to Water: Domestic and
International Implications, Geo. Intl Envtl. L. Rev. 1, (1992)

United Nations, Department of Technical Cooperation for Development
of Water Resources, undated brochure

Satvinder Juss, Global Environmental Change: Health and the
Challenge for Human Rights

T. Colborn, D. Dumanoski, and J. Peterson Myers, Our Stolen Future
(New York:Plume Books, 1997)

R. Campbell, V.Colas, L. Ivers, and L. Mead, “ Summary of the Third
Session of the INC for an International Legally Binding Instrument
for Implementing International Action on Certain Persistent Organic
Pollutants“, 1999, Earth Negotiations Bulletin 15, No. 27

Hayward, T., Constitutional Environmental Rights, Oxford University
Press, 2005